


Dead Code

by The Black Sluggard (Hazgarn)



Series: Null Operators [3]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ambiguous Morality, Angst, Antagonist Sole Survivor, Character Turned Into Vampire, Childe/Sire Bond(s), Fix-It of Sorts, Free Will, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Immortality, Implied/Referenced Mind Control, Minor Character Death, Murder, Post Brotherhood of Steel Ending, Post-Endgame, Power Imbalance, Revenge, Self-Destructive Tendencies, Supernatural Elements, Trust, Uneasy Allies, Vampire Turning, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:29:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23392519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hazgarn/pseuds/The%20Black%20Sluggard
Summary: Some of his vital functions appeared to have been terminated. That and other strange...anomalies had left X6-88 disoriented enough that he was being forced to build a new operating baseline. Somehow these changes had preserved his functionality despite sustaining what should have been a critical degree of damage.Perhaps not a malfunction, then, but rather an upgrade--the better to serve their stated goal of achieving revenge against the Brotherhood of Steel. X6-88 thought he could work with that.(The beginning of X6-88's life as the first synth vampire.)
Relationships: Deacon & X6-88
Series: Null Operators [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1534886
Comments: 14
Kudos: 26





	1. Mankind - Redefined

**Author's Note:**

> I got several chapters written during NaNoWriMo back in November. Most of those chapters need some revision, however, and with the NaNo event this April I'm going to try to focus on getting the rest of the fic finished. So it may be some time before this updates, but I wanted to at least post this first chapter as a bit of a promise that I am still actively working on this series.
> 
> As a side note, Maculategiraffe's series [How Life Goes On, The Way It Does](https://archiveofourown.org/series/456004) was finished in November as well, and I really recommend it for anyone looking for good, deeply emotionally focused Deacon and X6-88 content. It was an off-hand joke in _Remnants_ that inspired the original crazy idea for _Null Operators_ , but I also feel it informed a lot of my characterization for these two and how they interact with eachother. It's a very different story, but this series wouldn't exist without it.

* * *

The first thing X6-88 knew as he began his slow, strenuous climb back towards consciousness was the cold. Though such a simple word would have been woefully inadequate to give justice to the feeling. There was something...needy about the chill that had taken up residence inside of him. Something that gnawed and twisted like a burrowing thing in his chest and in his belly, something that had threaded its sharp and grasping reach through every limb and left his entire body paralyzed and aching. It was so encompassing that it seemed as if the cold was all he was—as if his body were merely a vessel that had been hollowed out to contain the impossible, tearing cold and its nameless, devouring want. It was emptiness, it was _agony_ , and he had no way to measure how long that feeling stretched on.

Yet, at length, other things began to register on the edge of his awareness—sounds and scents and sensations that hinted at a world beyond the darkness, beyond the hollowness and the cold—offering him at long last an anchor-line he could use to try and fight his way back from the depths of its torturous, icy oblivion.

X6-88 smelled blood.

There were other scents as well—decay, overripe and cloying in his nostrils. He could smell mold and soil and stagnant water. He smelled ash and the subtlest trace of ozone—a familiar scent evoking the rush of battle, the aftermath of laser fire. But it was the smell of blood upon which his senses narrowed, sharpening their focus. It was that scent—stale, rusty, and yet still somehow almost painfully vivid—which drew his attention. It coaxed a sudden, keen-edged urgency from out of that cold hollowness inside of him—an urgency with an edge sharp enough to cut through everything else, bringing at long last some measure of clarity to his thoughts.

It took a tremendous effort of will, but X6-88 was able to fight his way out of the dark, surfacing through the pain like a drowning man breaching for air. His limbs felt weighted with lead, his eyelids as if they had been welded shut, and even with the momentary focus he had won for himself he was light headed and confused.

Nonetheless, as he slowly surfaced from unconsciousness he was immediately aware of three things.

The first was that he was underground. It was an awareness he had always possessed and never truly bothered to quantify as more than a feeling of security that was absent on the surface. The second was that he wasn't alone, and that whoever was there was not only very close by, but that they were watching him intently. And the third—and most inescapable—was that he was unbearably thirsty, beyond anything he had ever felt in his life.

"Hey. Welcome back."

The voice was familiar, though X6-88 couldn't place right away just where he had heard it. He turned his head toward the voice, eyes fully opening at last to see a man seated on an old battered desk, watching him from behind a pair of sunglasses. The man was bald-headed save for a thin layer of stubble clinging to his scalp. He was rail-thin, with a sharp-featured face so gaunt as to seem almost skull-like. He was dressed in clothes that were both ragged and filthy enough as to fall below even the meager standards most wastelanders held. There was a scorch mark burned into the front of the man's shirt which _almost_ managed to call up some vague recollection in the back of his mind-

And X6-88 _knew_ that he had seen the man before, though he couldn't quite recall exactly where or when. But the pain was still a haze across his thoughts, his mind was still muddled by a confusion of sensory information that didn't seem to be processing itself quite right.

He was cold, inside and out. He was disoriented. He could smell blood, and his throat was so _dry_...

"I need..."

His voice was a rasp, barely above a whisper, and his words trailed off as X6-88 failed to place just what it was that he needed. Beside him the man let out a faint snort.

"Yeah, I know," the man said softly. He stood and held out his hand. "Come with me..."

X6-88 stared at the hand only a moment before, to his own vague surprise, he found himself taking it, allowing the stranger to pull him to his feet. As he rose from his prone position, X6-88 could finally make out his surroundings. The broken, dusty chamber was lit remarkably well by clumps of the glowing fungus that made a home for itself in the wastes. It took him a moment to realize that his location was a crypt—one of the dank basements which people of the Old World had once used for corpse storage long ago. The sarcophagi—such as the one he now realized he had been lying on—were broken and crumbling, the floor strewn with debris, ash, and bones. The remains were obviously far newer than any of the facility's intended occupants would have been. And as he had noted earlier, the air was tainted with the scent of rotting flesh, a miasma that should have been stifling. Yet it somehow failed to induce the immediate stomach churning response he felt it rightly should have. Perhaps the other scents were confusing it. The ash. The ozone.

The smell of blood, dried brown and hard on his armor. He could all but taste it on his tongue...

Suddenly the details—this place of the Old World's dead, the smell of ash, the scent of blood, the feel of it dried on his clothes—finally shook loose a memory. Just a brief shuffle of barely-grasped impressions: his injury, the stand he had made against the wasteland freaks that had surrounded him, and the man in the cemetery—the Railroad agent, inexplicably willing to lend him aid. And an offer...

What had it been?

X6-88 swayed slightly on his feet. He felt the agent reach up to steady him by his shoulders. He looked muzzily into the human's face with a frown, trying with great difficulty to make sense of it—any of it at all. And, to his further frustration, it seemed his disorientation must have been openly apparent on his face...

"C'mon," the agent was saying. "Just follow me. I'll help you find what you need. Then it will all make sense, I promise."

He paused.

"Well. Actually, it probably won't," the man amended, "but it's still the best place for us to start."

And though he might have wanted to argue X6-88 found himself complying without protest, only a faint notion of questioning his sudden obedience lingering in the back of his mind. He wasn't sure he trusted the agent at all, and he couldn't quite reason why he was following the man's directions anyway. Still, the thirst, the cold—the horrible _emptiness_ inside him—were quickly becoming all that he could think about, and the agent's promise of a remedy all that mattered.

He followed the agent through crumbling brickwork tunnels, out of the crypt and into the broken interior of some ancient ruined building. The room was long and somewhat narrow, cluttered with the remains of shattered wooden furniture. X6-88 belatedly registered it as one of the places where people would have gathered for worship, but other details occupied a far more immediate place in his mind. There were sounds up here where the crypt below had been all but silent—the sounds of clumsy movement, of muffled grunts and obstructed breathing, of debris disturbed underfoot...

And beneath these noises, yet somehow cutting through all of them, was this other sound...a pulsing, fluid rhythm that commanded his attention like a beacon.

The agent led him toward that sound, down the center path between the ruined piles of broken seating and behind the immense, listing apparatus of brass pipes and splintered wood that hovered near to collapse at the back of the room. There, one of the supports to the upper floor balcony was still intact and X6-88 could now identify the source of the sound—a wastelander, filthy and disheveled, struggling against the bonds that kept him tied to the rotting wood at his back.

After that, what happened next felt as inescapable as gravity. The way X6-88 stepped up to the captive without any further urging. The way the smell of dried blood still clinging to his coat, which had so distracted him before, was suddenly eclipsed in its importance by the scent of this man's blood—brighter, fresher, and impossibly more diverting. The way he never even had the chance to think about what he was doing as he took the man by the patchy hair on his scalp, pulled his head back and followed the promise of that scent to its inevitable conclusion...

When X6-88 came back to his senses a short time later it was with blood in his mouth and on his chin. It had painted a gory swath down his chest, leaving his armor streaked with red. The wastelander hung, dead and limp from the pillar in front of him, maimed distinctively—a deep, ragged wound torn into the flesh of his filthy throat. And it _was_ filthy, caked beneath the crimson spatter with the dirt and grime of the Commonwealth, and even the bright, metallic smell of the blood that still dominated the forefront of his mind could not completely drown out the chem-soaked stench of the man's unwashed body.

With so much confusion, so many questions and thoughts competing for attention in his mind, perhaps he shouldn't have been surprised at the one which finally made its way to his mouth.

"This...is disgusting," X6-88 heard himself mutter quietly.

There was silence at first, followed by a faint huff, the ghost of a laugh.

"Yeah, this asshole wouldn't have been my first choice either," the man behind him said. "Raiders aren't exactly _haute cuisine_. But here I am all of a sudden, a single father with a hungry newborn on my hands. It's not like I can afford to be picky."

The Railroad agent. The man from the cemetery.

His presence had been all but forgotten while X6-88 had...killed this raider, in the gruesome and baffling manner that he just had. It made no sense, neither the killing itself nor the inexplicable and startling lapse in his control. And he was still quite confused, but he realized that his mind felt far clearer now than it had only moments ago. Seizing on this clarity he tried to pull together the pieces that he remembered, attempting to place it into the picture of his current circumstances in a way that made any quantifiable sense.

He remembered stumbling, already injured from his encounter with Brotherhood soldiers, into a pack of feral ghouls somewhere near the waterfront. He remembered being mobbed by the ghouls, and mauled, and nearly dying. He remembered the way the ghouls had all scattered when the Railroad agent had shown up. And he remembered the strange offer the man had made...

He remembered accepting.

He remembered...eyes, in the dark. Eyes that had reflected red, and sharp teeth, unnatural in a human mouth. He remembered the touch of cold hands on his face. Cold fingers on his throat-

He remembered pain lancing through him, bright and sharp, penetrating deeper than any wound should have allowed, drilling from the point of injection at his throat into the very core of his being and filling his veins with ice. He remembered how it had crept into already weakened limbs leaving them deadened, his shallow breath laboring in his aching lungs. He remembered feeling a... _pull_ , as if something were tearing at him, as if the cold pain that had crept inside were a tether being hauled upon by something unseen. And again. And _again_... He remembered how the beating of his heart had turned into a tearing agony, as if with each beat his heart had been dragging far more weight than it should.

And the last thing he remembered was the press of cold flesh against his lips, the taste of copper in his mouth, and being told to _drink_...

He realized only as his tongue chased the blood still staining his lips that his own teeth felt wrong in his mouth. He thought about the raider he had just killed—about the taste of his blood—and how from the very start upon waking in this place none of how he was behaving had felt right. The blood had tasted as blood normally did, salty and metallic, and yet somehow different— _more_ in a way his mind struggled to find words to define. And his reaction had been...abnormal, to say the least. It had been so hot in his mouth, almost scalding, and that heat had seemed to fill him as he drank. That heat now seemed to linger, the painful, empty chill that had plagued him having been eased at last. And what was more, there had been a _rush_ to it—like the adrenaline high after combat—and he could recall how his heart had hammered almost painfully in time to the pulse of the raider as he died.

Which drew his attention at last to another alarming detail...

X6-88 froze, disarmed, and he hastily drew back the sleeve of his coat to press shaking fingers against the skin of his wrist. When that test failed to discredit his distressing observation, he moved those fingers to the vein on his throat. Finding no better evidence to allay his fears he struggled for a moment to parse the reality of the improbable...malfunction that had so gripped his attention. He turned, looking in alarm to the man at his side. A man who, behind his sunglasses, seemed to be watching him with an attentive and in its own way rather disconcerting amount of concern.

"Some...functions seem to have terminated," X6-88 managed, hating the way his...discomfort, his _confusion_ , at the strange thought made itself audible in his voice.

It honestly shouldn't have been possible. He knew enough about his own makeup to know that it _wasn't_ possible for him to remain operational like he was if his heart wasn't beating.

Watching him, the agent took a slow breath.

"Yeah, that..." he managed slowly, seeming to take a moment to consider what he was going to say. "That's...normal."

X6-88 could only stare at him, which apparently prompted the man to try again.

"Normalish," he amended. "Normal for us, anyway."

As X6-88 watched the man brushed a hand over the fuzz of red stubble growing in on his head.

"It'll come and go," the man continued, somewhat breezily, hefting what was probably meant to be a casual shrug. "Mostly go, but it'll beat again—like I'm sure it just did—whenever you get the chance to feed."

 _Feed_. X6-88 was immediately unsettled by the word—the sort one would use for an animal. But looking back on what he had done to the raider—the way the throat had been savaged and torn—it was impossible in that moment for him to find a satisfactory reason to argue against its use. He found his eyes drawn back down to the body. Then to himself, at the blood spilled on the floor and on his coat. There wasn't a lot. Or, more precisely, there was quite a significant quantity of blood on X6-88's clothes, but no where near as much as there rightly should have been.

And it was with that thought freshly in mind—and the immediate and alarming feeling of _want_ that it inspired—that the man beside him saw fit to burst in on his thoughts once again.

"Want more?" he asked.

And X6-88 thought he detected a note of self-satisfaction in the question, and he knew he saw it in the faint smirk on the agent's lips. He suspected that the man was asking with a certainty that he already knew, not only the answer, but how helpless X6-88 was in that moment to stop himself from giving it.

" _Yes,_ " X6-88 said, the word escaping him as something thin and desperate like a dying man's gasp.

The agent's expression broadened.

"Then come with me," he said. "I've got some errands to run. I'm sure we can pick someone up on the way."

They stepped out of the ruined church into what must have been early evening. X6-88 thought at first that it might have been earlier—perhaps still only approaching dusk—but he was forced to reassess his estimation quickly. There were far too many stars in the sky, more than he had ever seen on any of his trips to the surface...and they were so alarmingly _bright_.

The agent passed ahead of him, taking point to move along the edge of the building—in its shadow, X6-88 realized—with the practiced ease of someone for whom skulking in darkness must have been second nature. Or perhaps first nature, X6-88 allowed as he followed along behind his peculiar...guide in this experience, subtly impressed at the silence with which the agent moved. They had only traveled a short distance down the street when that silence was interrupted.

"Wait..."

The agent turned and placed a hand on his shoulder to signal him to a halt, but the gesture seemed not to have been needed. The word itself was barely more than a whisper, yet something about it still held enough weight that X6-88 found himself stopping immediately in his tracks. Then, as he watched the man...expectantly, the agent reached a hand into the pocket inside of X6-88's coat.

There were alarm bells going off in X6-88's head as the man did it—a warning that some part of him knew that he should respond to, and yet one that, strangely, he seemed incapable of acting upon. The agent somehow...didn't _feel_ like a threat. That was the only way X6-88 could think to describe it, though he knew only too well that, by all rights, he absolutely _should_. X6-88 knew that he shouldn't feel this...at ease in this man's presence when logic said they should more likely still be enemies. Less than a full week ago, before the Institute had fallen, he would have killed this man without hesitation, and he had no doubts that the human would have certainly done the same given the unlikely chance. He shouldn't be willing to allow the agent to get this close. And he absolutely should not have found it acceptable for the man to touch him.

Yet he was unable to react in that moment as he rightfully felt that he should, and in the time that he wasted assessing his own reaction, the agent had recovered the courser's own shades from his coat pocket, slipping them onto X6-88's face.

"There," the agent said, his voice still a low hush, punctuating the words with a pat on X6-88's shoulder. "Even more reason to wear these now. Don't want them to see us coming."

And the words made no sense at all to X6-88 until the memory slipped through of the agent's eyes as he had seen them in that brief glimpse at the cemetery.

Strange red light, glinting in the dark...

But X6-88 wasn't given much time to process that thought either, as a sound from down the road quickly captured his attention. He followed the sound—and the agent's gaze, he realized—to a place up the road where a couple of figures stood in the strange, too-thin shadow cast by one of the nearby buildings. Two raiders were leaning against the wall in one of the alleyways. From their relaxed demeanor, it was clear that they hadn't noticed X6-88 or his...grudging companion just yet. This struck X6-88 as odd for only a moment, as he could see the pair quite clearly. But with only a moment to reassess the situation he realized why this was not the case. The watery shadows, the brightness of the stars overhead, the ease with which both he and the agent had navigated their way out of the crumbling tunnels of the crypt in the absence of any source of light beyond the glow of fungus moldering in the dark...

It was not difficult to surmise that this was merely another anomaly related to his current...unusual circumstances.

"You take the one on the right," the agent said lowly. "I'll go left. Try not to let them get a warning off to any buddies they might have hanging around if you can help it."

It was said offhandedly, as if it weren't something the man was truly concerned about. Nonetheless, X6-88 found himself subject to a brief stab of offense at the instruction he was given. One should hope, after all, that as a member of the Railroad the agent would have some estimate of a courser's capabilities. Though he was not as reliant on...subtlety as his former enemies, he was more than adequately skilled in matters of stealth.

(And he flatly ignored the thought that protested distantly in the back of his mind that the agent's estimates of him should not have mattered. At just that moment he had more pressing things on his mind...)

X6-88's attention locked itself with surprising eagerness upon the task at hand. The goal of eliminating a single raider was such a simple one that on any previous night he would have considered it beneath classifying it as a task at all, let alone something that might be considered a challenge worthy of his skill. But it wasn't the promise of a challenge that was stirring his anticipation, he knew. Having been made starkly aware of it's presence once before in the ruined church, X6-88 could now easily recognize the need stirring in him, spurring him forward. The want aching in his belly.

Remembering the rush of it, the taste of it, the way the raider's heart had sung with his, X6-88 found himself ready to set his usual qualms aside if it meant living that experience again.

Being aware of his actions as he struck only made the changes the more obvious. He had been conditioned for speed and for agility, but he had never been quite this fast or moved with so little effort. He had been strong, but never so strong that the struggles of the terrified human in his arms should have amounted to practically nothing in the way of resistance. And it was alarming how little of what he was doing was truly his conscious choice—the way his body moved, operating on new instincts with which he had neither been trained nor programmed. The way every nerve in his body seemed locked on the pulse of his target, the way he dove eagerly for the promised bounty of the blood beneath the raider's soiled flesh without a second thought. And because he was aware, this time he could savor it in a way he hadn't been able to before. The heat, the life, the chemical tang of some contaminant lingering in the raider's blood, and...

And people often remarked that fear supposedly had a smell of its own. It was nothing that he had ever given much thought. Now, though, X6-88 thought he knew the taste of it...

Because he was aware he felt it when the still muscle in his chest began to stir, waking to some imitation of life to echo beat for beat the rhythm of the raider's pulse. And because he was so aware, so narrowed in on the life struggling in his grasp—the raider's desperation and his terror—this time he noticed when the raider fell quiet in his arms. Not limp, not unconscious. Not dead—not _yet_ —just still. Frozen. Even the muffled screams stifled beneath the gloved hand over the raider's mouth trailed off into whimpers until there was only the raider's rapid, reedy breathing to be heard. And then the stuttering skip in the raider's heartbeat as it flagged and began to fail. Then the last sluggish beats of his own as it too lost momentum and fell silent. And then...nothing at all.

Well. Almost nothing.

X6-88 let the raider's lifeless body drop and turned to the sounds of the other struggle being fought nearby. The agent still had the other raider in his grasp, and X6-88 couldn't help but watch with a disarmed, and somewhat distantly sickened fascination. The sight instantly found comparison in his mind with the times he had happened across feral ghouls feasting on the remains of some unfortunate wastelander. He watched the man locked upon his victim, given in wholly to the kill with the same bestial abandon that X6-88 had just experienced. He could hear the dual rhythms of their hearts beating in sync, he could see the terror in the wide-eyed expression frozen on the raider's face. And when the agent dropped the silent corpse to the ground, he could hear the raider's life endure for several moments more, beating away in the agent's chest. The man turned to look at him. His smile stood out, bright and sharp amid the gore that stained his mouth and his chin.

X6-88 lifted a hand to his own face and his glove came back tacky with blood. He resisted the urge to lick his fingers clean, but it was a very near thing. With few other options in the moment he scrubbed his face with the sleeve of his coat. It left a streak of fresh, wet red and flecks of faded brown smeared against the dark leather. The sight would once have disgusted him—it _should_ have disgusted him. Yet instead the sight only drew another pang of...appetite. Of interest from the need that still simmered inside him—the hunger that was, even now, somehow still unsatisfied.

Vague irritation stung him at the realization, and confusion returned to his thoughts in the wake of it. Why was this happening? What _was_ this?

And why was he just letting it happen? Why wasn't he _questioning_ any of this?

That last thought nagged and X6-88 found himself latching onto it, pressing upon it with his full focus until the words at last came to his lips.

"These...modifications," he managed uncertainly. "How have they been made?"

He wasn't sure what else he might have called the changes he had noticed in himself. It...wasn't a malfunction, he didn't think. Not precisely. Because this was something the agent had done to him, he knew that much. Understanding what this was—how it had happened—might help him to navigate this disorientation. If he only knew more perhaps he could let go of some of these concerns.

(Perhaps he wouldn't have to be terrified by the thought that, if it _was_ a malfunction, there was no longer anyone alive that could possibly hope to fix it...)

The man gave him a long look, seeming to consider the question before he let out a faint huff. He pulled up the collar of his already soiled shirt and used the fabric to wipe his face... _somewhat_ clean.

"Shit," the agent said finally, "what I wouldn't give to actually have an answer to that."

X6-88 waited for more, quietly if not quite patiently.

"I mean, if you're after the _real_ how, that's kind of above my pay grade," the man said slowly. "I've never really known for sure. I just know that it's blood-borne...and that it needs blood to feed it."

X6-88 had figured that much out himself already. He could now remember with some clarity those last moments when the peculiar bargain struck between them had been sealed.

"You drank my blood," he said quietly. He was still, after all of this, faintly sickened by the recollection. "And you fed me yours. When I was-"

X6-88 stopped himself short of stating that he had been injured. His memories of the events leading to their encounter that night were more than clear enough now for him to know that the word would have been...imprecise, at best.

"Dying," the agent finished for him.

X6-88 said nothing, either of denial or agreement. What would have been the point?

"I mean, you already noticed we work a bit...different than you'd expect," the man added eventually. "By a certain definition of the word, you actually kind of _did_ die."

X6-88 doubted it would be fruitful to attempt to deny that strange technicality either. That the Railroad agent had seen fit to save his life had seemed peculiar enough—unthinkable enough—on its own. The notion that he...hadn't been—hadn't _quite_ been—saved was simply too disarmingly surreal for him to begin to grasp.

Yet the agent had expressed a desire to see him re-purposed as a tool against the Brotherhood. Whatever lay behind these alterations, the fact remained that it had somehow managed to preserve his function despite his injuries—if in a somewhat irregular fashion. Perhaps it was more profitable, in that context, to focus on that. To focus on function and what lay ahead. To think of these changes not as a malfunction, then, but rather an upgrade.

X6-88 still wasn't sure how any of this was possible, but for now he was willing to work with that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter alternatively titled, "Vampirism is really gross, and X6-88 has Objections".


	2. Art Appreciation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> X6-88 revisits the graveyard, takes in some local culture, and finally learns the name of his traveling companion. 
> 
> Well _a_ name, anyway...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Several lines of dialogue taken from the game here. Spoilers for the side quest "Art Appreciation".

Their discussion lapsed into silence soon after and they continued on, leaving the gory remnants of their...meal behind. They traveled north, returning to the cemetery where he and his new strange acquaintance had first crossed paths. Whatever errands the agent had to run, it seemed they began here. X6-88 cast an uneasy glance at the corner of the cemetery where he had made his stand. The corpses of the ghouls he had shot that night still lay where they had fallen, heaps of toxic carrion that only the most desperate of scavengers would touch. The radiation pervading their bodies was to be thanked, at the very least, for it would take much longer for the bacteria to claim their fallen flesh. Despite having lain out in the sun for a day—if not longer—the stench was likely only as tolerable as it ever could have been when the creatures were still alive.

X6-88 forced himself not to linger there, choosing instead to follow his new...associate as the man made his way, searching for something among the gravestones at the northernmost edge of the cemetery.

"What are you looking for?" X6-88 asked.

It stood to reason, after all, that the sooner the man found whatever it was that he needed, the sooner they could _leave_.

"A sign," the man answered cryptically.

And it could have been a joke, or a dismissal, but X6-88 suddenly recalled something he had seen very recently on the broken brickwork as they left the ruins of the church where he had awakened.

"You're looking for one of those symbols," he realized. "The ones the Railroad used to mark things in their hideaways."

The man neither stopped in his search nor really looked at X6-88, but the courser saw him tap the side of his nose which he had to assume was acknowledgment of a sort.

"Markings like the ones in the church," X6-88 ventured.

The man stilled, his hand resting on a headstone.

"Yeah..." the agent said, drawing the word out slowly. "That was HQ."

He turned and offered X6-88 a tight smile.

"Hey, you found us!" he said, voice bright with mock cheer. "It's a little late, but I suppose congratulations are in order."

It took several minutes, but the agent eventually did locate the markings he was looking for. They were not in the cemetery itself, but painted onto the broken brick facade of a nearby building. They had not been easy to see...which, once X6-88 gave himself a moment to examine them in detail, he realized had surely been the creator's intent. Unlike most of the symbols he had seen in the past, traced or stenciled in washed out white paint, these rusty, faded markings were barely visible against the dull red brick of the aged building. But then it seemed they more than likely they had not been meant to be found by sight alone...

The markings had been drawn in blood now long-dried, yet still the scent lingered just strongly enough for them to detect find it.

The trail finally led them to a red door, tucked out of the way at the end of a narrow alley near the waterfront. The corpse of a raider lay outside, but that alone couldn't have accounted for the smell—the body was far too recent for that. Even from the outside, the building reeked of decay and old blood. As they stood before the door, X6-88 found the latter scent almost overpowering, cloying in a way that some part of him seemed divided over classifying as being either faintly enticing or wholly nauseating. Perhaps a measure of both.

The man ran his hand over a low place on the door where the faded ghost of one of the Railroad marks could still barely be seen, standing out faintly against the brighter red of the weathered paint. He looked at the door, seeming to debate with himself slightly.

"Blood that old usually means either a super mutant nest," the agent said. "Or the kinds of raiders that get into the really _sick_ shit. Ferals don't tend to leave enough viscera lying around uneaten for the smell to ever get that ripe."

"Mutants would have hounds outside," X6-88 supplied. "Raiders usually post guards."

They both looked at the corpse lying on the stoop of the building. If she had been their sole look-out, she had clearly been found unequal to the task. And even most raiders were at minimum smart enough to post more than one sentry.

"Yeah," the agent admitted slowly, frowning. "It _is_ a bit strange..."

After a minute of deliberation the man said slowly.

"We'll take this quiet. Just stick our heads in long enough to see what we'll be dealing with."

X6-88 could see no reason to argue.

They opened the door carefully and slipped inside. The hallway they stepped into was unlit, for the most part, though a small amount of dim light flickered from a parlor room nearby. More than enough light for the two of them to see by, but a much greater impediment to the building's occupants, for as they entered quietly—unheard and unseen—they soon saw that the building was far from empty. A pair of figures were waiting at the far end of the hall as if keeping watch—more raiders, he determined, judging largely by the smell of chems and poor hygiene.

"You think we're going to catch this Pickman psycho?" one of the two asked into the dim silence.

"The slippery bastard got away before," his companion said. "But Slab won't leave a man breathing after he's hunted our crew."

The first man shifted nervously, and even where he stood X6-88 thought he could smell his nervousness in the close air.

"I heard Pickman skinned Roy alive after he snatched him," the first man said, horror naked in his voice, "let the rats get him. Gives me the creeps just thinking about it."

"No joke," the man said beside him. "The faster we clip this asshole, the better."

The first of the two raiders gave a shudder.

"Always feel like something's watching me in here..."

Distracted as they were, the two raiders easily fell prey to another coordinated attack like the one they had accomplished outside.

Once the raiders had been dispatched, they took the time to search the lower level. What they found there was unusual enough—and alarming enough—that it gave them both pause. There were more bodies inside the parlor, and unless X6-88 missed his guess about the subject of their overheard conversation, the raiders they had killed were unlikely to have been responsible. Even without the knowledge he had gathered, he was certainly doubtful they would have possessed the requisite level of disturbing creativity to have come up with the complicated arrangement at the center of the room. Built from scrap furniture and barbed wire, among other, less easily identified materials, it seemed to serve no true purpose apart from providing the severed heads—and sundry other body parts—of several men a prominent place of display.

And it was far from the only concerning object in the room.

Along each of the walls were hung several framed paintings, all of them in a distinctively abstract, eye-catching, and inarguably macabre style. From the potency of the stench hanging in the air of the room, there was also no mistaking the materials used in the composition.

"Look at the brush work," the agent said. "And the bold use of color. Oh, and how batshit crazy the painter was. Don't forget that."

X6-88 looked over the disquieting yet...skillfully crafted images on display.

"I've used some of these techniques," he said.

The agent looked over his shoulder at X6-88 with what must have been a searching look behind those glasses.

"The work shows a certain commitment to the medium," X6-88 said. "While certainly unsanitary, the use of bile as a pigment is actually rather inventive, and the contrast it creates with the red is...evocative."

The man's stare continued for a few seconds longer before he spoke.

"You know," the agent said slowly, "I really can't tell if you're fucking with me, and I'm not sure I want to know."

X6-88 returned his stare, but said nothing.

"No, honestly," the man said. "I like it. Keep me guessing."

X6-88 still had a hard time telling just how much of what the man was saying was sarcastic, but he felt somewhat satisfied regardless. So far the agent had been less than forthcoming with his own information. He hadn't even offered a name, and at this point X6-88 refused to ask. Let the man continue to wonder.

The agent, meanwhile, had bent down to inspect another corpse lying on the floor of the room—the only occupant that seemed still more or less intact. He stood up shortly with a holotape in his hand. Without the proper listening equipment the audio was tinny and quiet, but in the heavy silence of the morbid gallery their senses were more than sharp enough to make out the words.

" _Seth. It's me. I found out what happened to the scouts that went missing up near the old art gallery. They're...they're dead, Seth. I'm lookin' at a...a goddamned painting of Kyle's body! Oh god... What the hell did they do to him?_ "

The words were interrupted, and over the recording X6-88 could hear a soft humming.

" _Who the hell's there?_ "

" _Admiring my collection?_ "

It was a different voice. Soft spoken with a note of pride. Unsettling in a way X6-88 would have found difficulty putting into words.

" _Stay away from me you psycho!_ "

The raider's voice fell into an unexpected, still silence that X6-88 might have assumed was the end of the recording had that other voice not eventually spoken up again.

" _Yes. Just like that_ ," the voice insisted with a strange, eager calm. " _Hold that expression on your face..._ "

"Well," the agent said once the recording reached the end. "That was... Yikes."

X6-88 doubted he could have described the exchange in the recording much more eloquently than that.

"It seems like we've walked in on someone else's search for revenge," he observed instead.

"Yeah," the agent said, frowning. "Makes things complicated. If someone is operating here, the cache I'm looking for might have been compromised."

Eventually they cleared the upper floor of its most hostile inhabitants. With no further sign of the markings the agent was looking for, there was only one route left for them to explore. In the back of the gallery was a set of concrete steps which led underground, eventually emerging into some type of utility tunnels. They were damp and filthy. They stank of rotting flesh and other things that were much worse. The sort of tunnels one expected to be alive with crawling vermin—in this case, more raiders seeking their prize.

"Pickman!" a shout rang out, sing-song, but filled with rage. "You can't hide forever, you sick bastard!"

Finally, after several yards of dust and crumbling masonry and the enliveningly violent slog it took to reach the end of it, the tunnel widened out into a larger chamber. At the bottom they could see a stand-off: Three raiders held a lone dark-haired man at gunpoint. This man was unarmored and apparently unarmed—at least that X6-88 could see—dressed only in an old, patched suit.

"Finally got you, Pickman," said the raider at center, gloating. "Thought you could hunt and torture our people to your heart's content."

The man—Pickman—said nothing, staring back at the raider with surprisingly little concern on his face. Indeed, though he and the agent should still have been hidden by the shadows, X6-88 thought he saw the man's eyes shift briefly their way.

(Though perhaps he only imagined the smile.)

"I'm going to _enjoy_ killing you," the raider concluded smugly.

All three of the raiders had their attention on the man in front of them. None of them noticed as X6-88 leapt down into the pit, landing quietly behind the speaking raider. There was a faint sound behind him—a sharp curse that he thought might have been the Railroad agent—but X6-88 had no mind for him at that moment. When X6-88 struck, Pickman used the confusion to throw a punch that sent the raider on the left reeling. And as his teeth tore into the throat of the raider in his arms, X6-88 heard the agent swear again, this time much louder.

"Fuck. Okay, I guess we're doing this."

When the raider on the left drew his gun, X6-88 turned to place the man he held in front of him like a shield. The armed raider's hesitation lasted just long enough that he never got a shot off before the agent was on him.

It wasn't long after that all three raiders lay dead in the dirt—two drained of their blood, and the third whose blood and brains now painted part of the stonework where Pickman had beaten his head against the wall.

"Word to the wise," the agent said, "I know it's hard to put the breaks on when you're new, but it's not the best idea to go feral like that when folks are watching. Eating raiders in front of people tends to make the locals a bit uncomfortable."

"Actually, I really enjoyed watching that," the painter protested, his tone disquietingly pleased.

The agent shot Pickman a considering glance.

"Well, judging from the fun house upstairs," he countered, "I'd say you're a statistical outlier."

Pickman ignored the man, instead offering X6-88 an oddly...pleasant smile.

"That was close," Pickman said. "Thank you."

It wasn't difficult to recognize the strange, soft-spoken voice he had heard on the holotape upstairs. Balancing it against what he had seen in the gallery, X6-88 was uncertain what to do with the man's gratitude. Though he suspected he might have been at an equal loss even had the source of that gratitude not been such a disquieting one. In the Institute, any gratitude displayed by his superiors had been rhetorical, a verbal formality toward which X6-88 had never been expected to give more than a rote acknowledgment. In the course of his prior existence, X6-88 had never been thanked with anything resembling this level of sincerity.

"Those people deserved worse than death," Pickman added calmly a moment later, perhaps ascribing some moral hesitance to the silence as X6-88 failed to find a response of his own.

"Didn't seem like the kind of people you'd want to invite home for Sunday dinner," the agent agreed, though the statement seemed hesitant, as if he were weighing his wording even as he spoke. "Seemed to have it out for you."

"A small disagreement," Pickman said. "They objected to my hobby of collecting their heads."

He shifted his attention to look at X6-88 once more.

"Let me repay you," Pickman said.

"No need," the agent interrupted, rather suddenly.

X6-88 briefly considered arguing. After all, it wasn't as if they had much between them in the way of resources. Yet based on his understanding of the Railroad and it's motives, it seemed...strange that the agent would choose to simply answer for him. And there was a faint, inexplicable nervousness detectable in the agent's voice, one that instinct—familiar instinct, an instinct that he trusted—left X6-88 inclined, just in that moment, to take heed.

"We're just here to pick up something a friend of mine stashed here," the agent continued mildly. "Probably before you ever set up shop."

"You mean dear Stanley?"

At these words, X6-88 saw the agent grow alarmingly still. In the time it took for Pickman to savor the man's shock, X6-88 never once saw him breathe.

"Oh, I _was_ here when he came through," Pickman said after a pause. "We had a rather long talk. The first of many. Quite a pleasant fellow. And he did say I might expect someone to come looking for it sooner or later."

"Right," the agent managed evenly, though it was clear to X6-88 that an effort was being made to maintain civility. "So you know where he left the things I'm looking for?"

"Of course," Pickman said. "Most of it is in a safe behind one of the portraits in the gallery. It shouldn't be too hard to find which one. I'll give you the key. Take anything else you like—freely—as a show of my gratitude, Mr... What was it he said your name was?"

As he watched, X6-88 thought he saw the agent's jaw tighten slightly.

"Dee," the agent said finally, and almost abruptly after what felt like too long a silence. "John Dee."

Pickman smiled indulgently.

"Mr. Dee," Pickman repeated, looking at the agent. "Of course."

Pickman turned to retrieve an object from a pile of things that had gotten knocked over in the scuffle. It was a book—a slim, rectangular pre-War paperback of the kind that one rarely found intact. Though the cover was dusty and a few of the pages bent, this one seemed otherwise in good shape.

"And I borrowed your book, Mr. Dee," Pickman said. "I hope you don't mind."

Pickman held the book and a key out to the agent—Dee—who reached for them immediately. Yet Pickman held on to the book, apparently not ready to relinquish the item just yet. He began, with an especial gravity, intoning words which X6-88 soon recognized as the recitation of some verse, perhaps from the book in question.

" _But see, amid the mimic rout_ ,   
_A crawling shape intrude!_   
_A blood-red thing that writhes from out_   
_The scenic solitude!_   
_It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs_   
_The mimes become its food,_   
_And the angels sob at vermin fangs_   
_In human gore imbued._ "

A silent beat passed before Dee let out a huff that sounded...unimpressed.

"Poe? Really? Yeah, you seem the type."

Pickman's smile held, unperturbed.

"I suppose your tastes lean a little more...Byronic," the painter mused.

Suddenly, inexplicably, the agent's smile was gone.

"Give me the book," Dee demanded quietly. " _Please_."

The killer's smile broadened but he let the book and key slip from his grasp. The agent dipped his head in a brief nod to Pickman before turning around. Walking past X6-88 he spoke under his breath.

"We need to leave. Now."

Though X6-88 wasn't sure he understood the urgency, there was insufficient reason to argue.

They returned to the gallery upstairs and began their search for the safe Pickman had mentioned. Given the chance to examine the pieces displayed with more leisure, X6-88 decided that the paintings were actually...rather well executed, despite their gruesome composition. Yet, the more he looked, he began to feel that there was something in their subject matter somehow subtly more disturbing than the medium from which they had been made. The more he looked—into the staring yellow eyes that seemed to watch him and his companion from their place on canvas—the more he felt as if something was looking back. And the more he felt that...there was something in these paintings, some meaning to them. That they shared some theme in common that he could discern if he were to just keep looking...

With some difficulty, X6-88 tore his eyes away from the canvas in front of him. Unsettled, he turned to watch Dee for a moment where he was also looking through the displays.

"Why did we need to leave so abruptly?" X6-88 asked him at last.

He wasn't sure why he was asking—perhaps merely to distract himself. Or perhaps he expected the agent to have some insight into his own sudden disquiet...some knowledge regarding the host of this gallery that X6-88 might himself have missed.

"Have you ever been trapped in close quarters with something dangerous that wanted to eat you?" Dee asked him. He paused then amended: "Apart from the night we met, I mean."

"I can't say that I have."

"Well _I_ have," Dee said. "More times than I like to think about. And it's been a long time since anything's given me the heebie-jeebies that bad. In my experience, when that happens, it's a real good idea to listen."

Which told X6-88 nothing concrete at all. Still, somehow he found the notion that he was not alone in this...unease vaguely reassuring.

"I think this is the one you're looking for," X6-88 said.

The agent turned to him and X6-88 saw the edge of one reddish eyebrow rise over the edge of his sunglasses. It was uncertain whether the confusion was due to the subject matter of the portrait in front of them, or the conclusion X6-88 had drawn. X6-88 lifted the painting carefully off the wall. Sure enough, there was a wall safe hidden behind it.

"How did you–"

X6-88 pointed out the small plaque on the wall naming the piece 'Picnic for Stanley'. The agent read it over, casting a second—and, X6-88 thought, rather disquieted—glance at the portrait in the courser's hands. The image of a face painted in blood looked back at them, its hollowed eye-sockets somehow seeming to stare at them more intensely than the yellow orbs floating to either side of the face. As he looked it over the agent silently shook his head—not in denial, X6-88 thought, but in a sort of queasy disbelief.

"Damn it, Doc," X6-88 heard him mutter to himself. "What the hell were you doing here?"

X6-88 knew nothing about this acquaintance that Dee and the killer they had left down below apparently shared. He could surmise, from the details of their search, that the man had likely been a member of the Railroad as well. And if he were to hazard a guess, it would be that this man had more than likely suffered the same fate as the rest of the organization's rebels clearly had. Whatever questions the agent possessed, the man he knew was no longer around to provide him with the answers.

From his clear—though frankly understandable—mistrust of the murderer in question, X6-88 thought it unlikely that Dee would bring himself to ask.

The safe opened easily to the key Pickman had given them. There were several items inside—a knife and a pipe pistol, and some loose ammunition. Most of the room, however, was taken up by a battered metal box that had once housed medical supplies. One of the Railroad's symbols had been scratched into the flaking off-white paint. Dee snatched it up quickly. He set it on a nearby table—a rusted medical cart, actually, bearing the decaying corpse of a raider that in his eagerness the agent seemed capable of ignoring—and began setting the contents out where he could see them, cataloging what was inside.

The box had been packed tightly with odds and ends. X6-88 saw a handful of stimpaks and a pair of StealthBoys, a 10mm pistol and a box of ammunition, and a metal tin that rattled with what he guessed was a stash of the pre-War bottle caps used as currency on the surface. There were a handful of holotapes as well, labeled only with numbers. A faded box opened up to reveal what seemed to be several electrical components—X6-88 identified one of them as a sensor module. And lying flat at the bottom of the box was a folded up piece of cardboard acting as a makeshift folio for several sheets of loose, crumpled paper, tied shut with a frayed length of twine.

As Dee took his time examining the contents of the box, X6-88 took the opportunity to analyze a peculiar detail he had earlier noted in the chamber below. He had dismissed it at first, amid Dee's perplexing conversation with the painter, as a mere trick of the light. The room where they had encountered Pickman had been more brightly lit than the rest of the gallery—indeed, brighter than anywhere X6-88 had been since waking in the crypt below the church—and the light had seemed stark and unusually harsh, though he assumed that under normal circumstances it wouldn't have been.

Now that they had returned to the comparatively welcoming darkness, X6-88 saw that his eyes hadn't been mistaken. In his first impression of the Railroad agent, Dee had seemed a man on the edge of the worst deprivation the Commonwealth had to offer—the angles of his face sharpened and hollowed out as if by sickness or hunger, his thin frame scarcely supporting enough muscle to fill out the form of his clothes, let alone possess the power to wrestle a struggling raider to easy submission. Yet X6-88 had noticed his own strength enhanced since waking, and it wasn't that conspicuous strength that he found so concerning. No, it was the fact that now that he was looking, X6-88 could see that those harsh angles had visibly softened. Though still lean—if not unusually so for a wastelander—Dee no longer looked like a man on the last legs of starvation. Somehow, in the two or so hours since they had left the crypt, a change had occurred, one that seemingly mimicked the sort of recovery that should have taken weeks—if not months—to achieve.

(That there seemed only one possible catalyst for this change crossed his mind, and X6-88 found himself once again disarmed by just how little he understood about Dee, and by extension himself.)

X6-88 was jarred out of his observations by the sound of the box lid slamming shut, abnormally loud in the unsettling, still silence of the gallery. Dee had already perused its contents to his satisfaction and packed them away again.

"This is it," Dee said abruptly, tucking the box under his arm. "Now let's get out of here and try our very best to forget we ever saw this place."

X6-88 said nothing, but took Dee's words to mean that the rest of the items within the safe held no interest to him. Though it had not been in his mind to, he found himself examining the knife that lay inside. At first glance it looked like a basic combat knife, not dissimilar from one he might have been issued by the SRB if the handler behind a mission deemed it necessary. But the blade was treated with a coating that darkened the metal to a dull black. It was also cruelly serrated, a series of fine grooves filed into the the steel at irregular intervals that had almost certainly been done by hand, giving it a biting edge. It wasn't the most practical design for combat—teeth on the edge of a slicing weapon ran the risk of getting caught in the fibers of a target's clothes or armor—but his guess was that practicality wasn't the philosophy behind the design.

Something about the knife seemed...hungry in a way that felt very familiar. The stroke of this blade might not slice as efficiently as a simple keen edge, but the wound that it made would _bleed_...

When he looked up, X6-88 saw that Dee was looking his way. Though the expression he saw gave away nothing of the sort, something about the attention struck him as strangely watchful, and he half imagined the stare behind the agent's shades as something speculative, calculating.

"I won't tell you not to take it," Dee said finally.

Though it was plain enough in his tone that the agent clearly thought he shouldn't.

"It's just a knife," X6-88 said.

Dee let out a faint hum, one that sounded almost skeptical.

"Take what you want, then," the agent said. "I'll be outside when you're done."

It was merely a knife, he affirmed to himself as the footsteps faded behind him. The paintings, for all their gory nature and morbid matter, were just colors on canvas. The man in the tunnels below was a killer and a madman distinguished from his victims only by virtue of preying on beasts that were as bad as he was. And Dee, despite his peculiarities and the myriad questions left unanswered—about the man himself, as much as his nature—was still in the end just a wastelander, clearly prone to the same illogical nonsense and magical thinking as any of them. X6-88 knew that his own strange circumstances had left him...disoriented and off-balance since his waking in the church, otherwise he would never have let any of this get under his skin the way it had.

For a courser to let himself become caught in the current of some...melodramatic and superstitious foreboding? It was absurd. Embarrassing. _Laughable_.

Pushing past the brief flash of shame, X6-88 took the weapon from the safe, along with its nearby sheath. He almost didn't notice when the movement dislodged a small scrap of paper, which fluttered down to the ground like a moth. He sheathed the knife and tucked it inside his jacket with a frown before retrieving it from the stained and filthy floor of the gallery. Even before he unfolded it he felt a faint stab of unease.

A crude depiction of a heart was smeared onto the paper in blood, and he told himself that perhaps his unease was because he had smelled the blood without noticing. Amid the horrors of Pickman's other works, however, that explanation seemed somewhat lacking. And it wouldn't properly account for the way his unease only deepened at the words sharing the page which, for all they were written in simple black ink, somehow managed to be the most disturbing detail...

 _"Thanks, Killer,"_ was all the note said.

X6-88 could practically hear them spoken in the painter's soft voice as he read them. On their own, the words seemed...if not precisely innocent, then nothing that should have held any kind of menace. It was the implication however that gave him pause. He recalled too clearly Pickman's calm gratitude down in the tunnels, yet it didn't seem possible for him to have put this note here for X6-88 to find it. Even if the key he had given to Dee were not the only key, it stretched the imagination that he could have found his way back and placed it before the two of them could reach the safe. And the blood on the note was dry.

Had the note been in the safe when they entered the gallery? Had it been meant for someone else? If so then who? What would that person have been thanked for? Perhaps it had been left for Dee's acquaintance—the doctor that Pickman seemed also to have known. Perhaps it had been meant for Dee himself, as Pickman had said his return for the cache was expected. A note missed and never received. Perhaps...

A creak filtered down from the stairs above, interrupting X6-88's thoughts. He stood and listened, but heard no heartbeat or breathing, no footsteps, no further noises to indicate that he wasn't alone.

Closing his eyes, X6-88 took a slow, deliberate breath. He needed to cleanse his mind of this nonsense. The noise was just the settling of a building that had stood for over two-hundred years, and a question he didn't have an answer for did not mean the answer had to be something uncanny. And because there would be no ready answer, his speculation was nothing less than a waste of his time. Dee was waiting for him outside, and they both had more important things ahead of them.

(Yet he folded the note carefully before he stuck it into the pocket of his coat. And he made sure to close the safe, and to replace the painting to it's place up on the wall before he left. Uncanny or not, putting the painter's display back as they had found it... It seemed only polite.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't remember where I got the idea for Deacon and Pickman pretentiously sniping at eachother over poetry, but I know I found it unreasonably funny at the time. The poem is Edgar Allen Poe's "The Conqueror Worm". And yeah, Pickman definitely seems the type.
> 
> X6-88's bit of internal monologue regarding Pickman's paintings isn't some kind of commentary on X6 or Pickman, just 100% whatever I start thinking if I look at them too long.
> 
> Funnily enough, I'd decided on the gallery as the location for the cache first, and only afterwards made the connection between the portrait title and Carrington's first name. Weird how these things happen.
> 
> (P.S. I 100% believe the idea for this chapter would have never come to me if not for Cannibro, whose userpic in the comments of the earlier fics always left me thinking about the gallery, and I'm really glad it did.)


	3. Learning Curve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The pair hole up for the day as X6-88 comes to learn some the downsides to his recent upgrade, and the Commonwealth continues to be an affront to his standards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been longer than I would have liked it to be, and I've been quieter than I would have liked to have been. I don't want to leave a lengthy note about it, so I'll leave it at that beyond a brief apology to those who have left comments for my lack of response. They're very much appreciated (dear gods are they appreciated), but I haven't been in a headspace where I've found it easy to interact with people directly.
> 
> (At least it hasn't been two years between chapters again...eh.)

When he stepped out of the gallery it was into an oppressive atmosphere. The air outside felt stifling despite the slight breeze that was blowing. There was an odd scent on the air that X6-88 somehow felt he should recognize, but that he couldn't quite place. It was strangely metallic and it burned his nostrils slightly. X6-88 felt...off, vaguely over sensitized. Even the skin of his face where it was exposed to the wind almost felt like it was burning...

" _Shit._ "

X6-88 followed the sound of his companion's voice. Dee stood beside him on the stoop of the gallery, and as he watched X6-88 saw the man lift his head slightly, almost as if scenting the air.

"What is it?" X6-88 asked him.

His own voice sounded odd to him, and it took a moment for X6-88 to realize that his ears were ringing faintly.

"Radstorm," Dee told him. "And we need to get some shelter before it hits. Follow me. I know a place we can lay low for a bit...so to speak."

X6-88 looked at the sky. It was still clear, with no sign of the clouds or the sickly green hue that usually signaled an approaching storm. But X6-88 couldn't quite fit the words together to begin to protest this fact, and when he felt the Railroad agent tug on his sleeve, his otherwise unprompted impulse was to follow where the other led. The ringing only got louder and more distracting as he and Dee made their way up onto a fire escape, and over the rooftops. Up this high, at least, X6-88 could now see it—a hazy emerald stripe on the horizon to the west, heralding the coming storm. Yet with its approach the winds grew stronger, and the itch on his skin and the distortion fuzzing the edge of his senses only grew more acute. The effect was subtle, but as they made their way toward a makeshift catwalk X6-88 realized that his balance was becoming somewhat unsteady. Suddenly unsure of his footing he nearly balked seeing the precarious path set in front of them—the rickety walkways of half-rotted scrap wood and the uncomfortably high fall they would suffer should they fail. Yet with Dee's wordless urging behind him—with the other man's hands there to keep him steady—they soon came to a door leading into one of the forsaken buildings, and the agent quickly dragged him inside.

Once the door was closed behind them, Dee guided X6-88 to sit on a moldering sofa before giving the room a brief sweep to ensure the dank little hole truly was as uninhabited as it appeared. While the agent searched, X6-88 slowly pulled himself free of his disorientation. He heaved a cough and swallowed, and thought he tasted blood—perhaps his own—clinging at the back of his throat. As he regained his equilibrium he was able to take in more about the place that Dee had chosen for them to take shelter. It was a musty little apartment, dust-choked and stuffy. The close air smelled very strongly of mold. Its interior was impossibly cluttered, and the room in which X6-88 now found himself was dominated in the center by a heap of rubbish that by its sheer size alone rendered the room difficult to even navigate. The pile mostly consisted of more than a dozen mildewing cardboard boxes, each of which held an assortment of items with little common thread between them that X6-88 could see. He felt that even most of the wasteland's desperate inhabitants would have been forced to admit it was clearly garbage.

Under most circumstances, X6-88 would have protested even entering, let alone entertained the idea of taking shelter in a place like this. Yet from the condition he was in, it was impossible to argue that they hadn't been in urgent need of it.

"What...what was that?" X6-88 asked, once Dee had finished his sweep.

Dee dragged a rickety chair from under a table that was hidden somewhere within the pile of junk and turned it around, sitting down so that he could easily face both X6-88 and the door.

"Radstorm," Dee answered him—at which point X6-88 hazily remembered that he had already asked that question and been given the answer before. "Probably felt a lot different than it used to, right?"

X6-88 saw no point in answering. It would have been useless to deny his earlier weakness and disorientation when the agent was not only aware of the attack and its severity, but almost certainly knew far more about its cause than he did himself.

"We can bounce back from a lot of things," Dee told him, "but we're not much more resistant to rads than anyone else. Kind of the opposite, in fact. However we work, radiation tends to mess it up pretty bad. A big enough dose can cause all sorts of things to break down, even when it wouldn't in other people. It won't kill us outright, but even a small amount can make our lives a whole lot harder. We can recover given enough time, but it really takes a lot of time to right itself on its own. Blood helps the process, of course. Though depending on how clean the source is you can wind up biting nothing but your own ass trying to deal with rads that way..."

A crash of thunder sounded outside, heralding the arrival of the true edge of the storm. Even with the shelter of walls around them limiting their exposure, the sound was accompanied by a wave of roiling nausea that coursed through X6-88's stomach. It didn't quite manage to double him over, but he doubted he was able to keep the misery of it from showing on his face. He lifted his head and saw Dee looking his way, what was no doubt a measuring stare examining him from behind his reflective glasses.

"Don't worry," Dee said. "We can stay here for the day. You'll need to rest soon anyway."

X6-88 felt his fists clench at his sides.

"The storm will likely blow over in only a few hours," he insisted evenly.

Dee's stare didn't waiver, though X6-88 noticed a slight, thoughtful cant to his head.

"Yeah, no, trust me," Dee said, shaking his head. "You're not in any shape to travel during the day. Not yet."

"I'm not–"

X6-88 cut himself off. To say that he had not been compromised by the radiation would have been a lie, and in that moment he found himself inexplicably conflicted. On the one hand, he was loathe to admit weakness in front of the Railroad agent. Yet, at the same time, a part of him felt an unexpected discomfort at the thought of trying to hide it.

In the Institute, disguising one's deficiencies from a superior was framed as an equal sin to suffering those deficiencies in the first place. To do so was an indication that a unit valued some misguided sense of personal pride over the good of the Institute. It was a defect that X6-88 had made the mistake of succumbing to in the past, and one against which he tried to remain on guard, lest he risk its recurrence. And X6-88 discovered, to his visceral alarm, that he felt a similar unease in this moment. As if some unfamiliar and unwelcome part of him had somehow filed his tentative partnership with the Railroad agent in the same category as the loyalty to his handlers at the SRB without his prompting.

It was confusing. Distressing. At the moment, however, it was not a problem X6-88 had any way of addressing directly. With nothing actionable to be done about this confusing error of allegiance, he chose instead to focus on the subject at hand.

"I'm not...impaired," X6-88 said instead. "Whatever our plans, we shouldn't waste more time than we have to."

"Look, give me the credit to know what I'm talking about," Dee said. "The rads are bad, but the sun's not exactly our friend either. Even I don't like to travel during the day if I can help it. And you're...new. Big, tough, indestructible courser or not, it's going to take you some time before you can handle something like that."

X6-88 just watched him for a moment, confused by the words.

"The sun?"

"Yeah, you know," Dee said, "that big old annoying light bulb in the sky? That puts out radiation too. A different kind, but it's still enough to screw with us. It probably won't kill you—not unless you're already in _real_ bad shape—but trust me when I say it's no fun at all. And I think we're sort of made to conserve energy when we're not hunting. So once the sun comes up, you're not even going to _want_ to go anywhere, either, believe me..."

X6-88 was silent a moment as he contemplated this peculiar...limitation. He was not happy to learn about these new, odd vulnerabilities he now apparently had. Still, given the effectiveness of his other modifications, he was sure he would be able to acclimate himself in time. There were worse trade-offs to be had, and it was certainly preferable to being dead.

"Not much of a loss," X6-88 told him flatly. "The Commonwealth is moderately less offensive at night."

Dee offered him a faint smile.

"Now there's a good attitude to have," he said. "I mean, it's a bit backhanded as acceptance goes, but I guess I'll take it."

X6-88 did not comment on Dee's assessment, instead sparing a moment to contemplate their wretched little sanctuary.

"If we are going to be...vulnerable when the sun rises," he asked, "should we perhaps barricade the door?"

Dee shook his head.

"Nah," he said. "Anything that stumbles in on us will wake us up long before they realize we're here. And if that happens..."

The agent smirked.

"Well, it's been a long time since I've had dinner conveniently delivered to my door."

It was a few hours later that X6-88 found, to his significant dismay and frustration, that the agent had not been exaggerating the effects that sunrise would bring. Though he had not been paying close attention, he soon found an unconscious awareness of the encroaching dawn imposing itself upon his mind. It took the form of an odd feeling of overall disquiet, a vague sense of tension the cause of which was difficult for him to pinpoint—beyond the knowledge that somewhere beyond the walls of their sanctuary the sun was growing brighter in the sky. And as that tension grew, it seemed to solidify into something like a weight pressing down on him. A weight that eventually smothered him, sending him drifting down into a deep and seemingly impenetrable stupor.

When X6-88 woke up near dusk the following evening it was to the sound of the door opening. It was a very different type of awakening than what he had experienced the previous night. His eyes were open immediately and he was instantly at a state of alert. Though his limbs still felt heavy they didn't fight him as he rose swiftly to his feet, facing the figure silhouetted in the doorway. The sun had not set just yet, and a narrow sliver of ruddy light snuck through the crack of the door as it made its way closed. It was only for a moment, but X6-88 felt himself flinch back as the light stung his eyes, even through the dark protection of his sunglasses, and sent a wave of hot agony pounding through his head.

"Shit," he heard Dee swear softly from the door. "Sorry. Thought you'd still be out of it."

X6-88 said nothing as he returned to his seat on the rotting sofa, bending his head down as he rubbed his watering eyes.

"See, I told you it's no fun," Dee said.

X6-88 heard him moving...something. The sounds of rubbish being rearranged or removed from the apartment's half-buried dining table.

"And yet you did go outside," X6-88 observed, finally opening his eyes.

"I can push myself to work during the day when I have to," Dee said, "but it takes a lot out of me. You'll get there, it just takes time to develop the reserves for it."

Dee had gotten a dufflebag from somewhere, and he was digging through its contents where it sat on the table. He seemed to be organizing items into two discrete piles, though X6-88 could not discern the reason why.

"Anyway, I had to go back to grab a few essentials," he explained. "Quite a few dead raiders back there who had things they wouldn't be needing anymore. Some of it wasn't even garbage. Which, here..."

He took out a shortened rifle and a few battered boxes of bullets and set them on top of a pile of ragged leathers.

"A day late but...Happy Birthday," Dee said. "I tried to find your laser rifle the other night but it didn't survive first contact with the headstone I threw it at. I'd apologize, but you did kind of melt some of my organs together with that thing. I was a little mad."

X6-88 stood and approached the table to examine the weapon. It wasn't...of terrible quality. Or perhaps it was better to say: it had probably been an example of admirable craftsmanship two hundred years ago. Still, it was relatively free of rust, and the truncated stock had either been well kept or recently replaced. Ballistic weapons weren't the usual armament issued by the SRB, but he had nevertheless been trained in their use. Overall it was an acceptable offering.

The battered leathers which Dee rather insistently nudged his way, on the other hand...

"I'm not going to wear those."

"The courser outfit is sexy as hell, but it's going to draw the wrong kind of attention," Dee said. "I've got business that needs dealing with in Bunker Hill, and last time I heard it was firmly under Brotherhood control."

He tilted his head as he watched X6-88, who saw an eyebrow lift over the rim of the agent's sunglasses.

"I mean, I'm guessing that's where the little goon squad you ran into was stationed out of, right?" Dee said. "Think any of them made it back to give a report to their superiors about the courser they spotted in the North End?"

X6-88 couldn't help the slight grimace that found its way onto his face at the thought. At least, he assumed that was his expression. There was a flicker of feeling for a moment—something that was almost rage, and which was accompanied by a faint stir of hunger—that made him wonder if there was another more...savage word that might have been more accurate for it.

"There...may have been survivors," he conceded quietly.

Looking over the thin, soiled leathers he frowned.

"These smell like someone died in them," X6-88 observed flatly. "They probably smelled like that before we killed those raiders."

"Someone probably did die in them before the raiders put them on," Dee said, hefting a shrug. "We might be able to afford better once we get to Bunker Hill. There's some salvage in here we might get a few caps for. I promise I'll have a real good look while you're putting those on."

X6-88 let out a slow breath, unpleasantly resigned. And he was sure that Dee was well aware of the glare he directed the agent's way as he took the wastelander garments and turned to look for a place where he could change his clothes. It was likely there had been other rooms here, once, but the two doorways he could see were blocked with a combination of rubble and more of the cluttered junk and debris that overwhelmed the rest of the apartment. While it would have been desirable, privacy wasn't a tremendous concern to him—a lesser one, certainly, compared to the overall tragedy of hygiene that the cramped and filthy hovel represented. Eventually he deemed the kitchen area the least questionable, and took his items there to change.

"Here, heads up!"

X6-88 turned just in time to catch the bottle of water as it was thrown his way.

"Take the time to freshen up a bit while you're at it," Dee said as he returned to searching through the items in his bag. "You're presentable enough for a heart to heart with the friendly neighborhood serial killer, but even Bunker Hill has slightly higher standards when it comes to looking like you just ate someone."

X6-88 said nothing, turning around to set his items on the kitchen counter. There was a battered toaster next to the sink, its surface reflective enough once he scrubbed some of the dust and other grime away with his sleeve. He leaned it against the wall and took an appraising look at himself. To his great dismay he saw that the agent was right in his assessment—his appearance had fallen far, _far_ below acceptable standards of dignity. While he had managed to wipe most of the blood clean from his mouth and chin at various points the previous night when it was still fresh, there were several places he had missed. He had taken less care elsewhere, and he was disgusted to find upon opening the collar of his coat that his neck and the top of the shirt underneath had become caked with it.

X6-88 returned the toaster to the counter and used a nearby bowl to prop it up at an angle. With a little digging, he found a dishrag that was still more fabric than mold and wet it with the water Dee had given him. He then took off his undershirt and his sunglasses, intending to wash himself as thoroughly as circumstances could afford, but a glint of color from his makeshift mirror caught his attention sharply. He stilled, unsettled, and it took a moment before he could steel himself to lean forward for a better look.

He had not forgotten, precisely. It would have been quite difficult for him to forget the red eyes that had been the last looming sight before...his death, if the Railroad agent was to be believed. Nor had he forgotten Dee's comment upon returning his glasses before their first...hunt. Yet he had somehow failed to connect the two details until just that moment, as he looked into his own reflection and found that same peculiar, back-lit red staring back. The sight alarmed him, and not just for the obvious reasons. It was perhaps the first piece of visible evidence he had seen of the recent changes he had suffered. While he felt many of them, seeing them appeared to present it's own hurdle to overcome.

His eyes were the most visible change. His teeth, he knew, were another. He had felt them early on, and in hindsight he realized that acclimating himself to the difference had taken him remarkably little thought or effort. Now, he took the opportunity to look at them. Like Dee's, his cuspids showed a definite alteration in both size and shape. The ones in his upper jaw appeared to have increased in length by nearly half their former size, and the ones on bottom, while shorter, were still rather noticeably more prominent than he was sure they once had been. And they had become exceptionally sharp. He had felt it, both in direct exploration of his mouth with his tongue and in the way they had parted flesh—and even, in a few instances, the raiders' inadequate leather armor—with ease.

It was only seeing them now that he truly grasped—allowing himself a moment's imprecision—how inhuman they made him look. How bestial. They looked like they belonged to an animal, not a man. And certainly not to the peak product of the Institute's scientific achievement—their final enduring legacy before the folly of the wasteland rabble had brought their work to ruin...

And X6-88 was guilty of far worse than simply looking like an animal—he had been _behaving_ as one. Since the moment he woke in the crypt beneath the church he had allowed himself to follow Dee's lead, but otherwise he had been navigating his way from one moment to the next by blind instinct alone. He hadn't even made an effort to arm himself before taking the knife from Pickman's safe, far too content with simply slaughtering his prey with his _teeth_. If he allowed himself to be ruled by this—if he allowed himself to be reduced to a vessel of base desire, to the hunger for blood and the thirst for the kill—was he truly better than any other savage creature haunting the Commonwealth?

X6-88 felt his fists clench again at his sides.

It couldn't continue in this way, X6-88 told himself. This behavior was unbecoming of a courser—an insult to the Institute's investment in his engineering and his training. He was more than this. He was _better_ than this–

He _had to be_ better than this...

He needed to regain his focus. The Railroad agent had promised him the chance for revenge, and the thought of bringing some form of retribution against the Brotherhood appealed to him greatly. Yet even more than that basic primitive notion of taking satisfaction in blood-for-blood, another prospect whispered at the back of his mind. As great as his desire to exact his pound of flesh from the Brotherhood of Steel for the injustice of the Institute's demise, another desire loomed larger in his mind. A coal of rage he had been forced to bank, to hide away, for the idea of seeing it fulfilled had seemed all but impossible. Vengeance he wanted, but what he truly desired was vengeance against the architect of the Institute's destruction. To seek out the true catalyst of their end. The man who had betrayed the Institute, betrayed the Director—betrayed _Father_ —the man who had seen the grand product of his son's life's work and his dreams and burned them all to the ground, salting the earth when he was done.

_Walker_.

X6-88 was resolved. He would follow Dee and his plans for revenge, to a point. He would serve whatever vendetta the Railroad agent sought after until he was placed in the proper position to pursue his own. He would learn what he could of the limits of this strange second chance he had been given, and once he was secure in his new capabilities he would would let nothing else stop him. Nathaniel Walker would die by his hands.

Stripping away his gloves, X6-88 picked up the damp dishcloth and began the work of scrubbing away the blood still clinging, dried and crusted, to the skin of his face and his throat.

Perhaps when they reached Bunker Hill they could also procure some soap.


	4. Tradecraft

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Bunker Hill, X6-88 encounters further trials in his new existence...
> 
> (Largely the philosophical monologing and subtle head games which seem to be Dee's preferred method of bonding with a new partner.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Taking into account that this is already a fic that updates both erratically and slowly, I'm going to need you to be patient with me. My computer's hard drive is failing. While the fic files are safe they aren't particularly accessible at the moment. I do still have a handful of "finished" chapters that mostly just need revision, but finding a way to do that has been...an experience.
> 
> (This chapter was largely edited on my Xbox, which I don't recommend. So please let me know if you see any glaring errors I might have missed.)
> 
> The next chapter is probably not going to be up for a while. We'll see.
> 
> A few lines of dialogue taken from the game here, mostly just some of Deacon's NPC interactions. Minor spoilers for the quest "Human Error".

It was perhaps half an hour into dusk when Dee and X6-88 made their arrival at the gates of Bunker Hill.

On the way, Dee had taken time to brief him on the front they would use once they reached the settlement. Two scavengers—an easy enough image to present, dressed as they were in the soiled rags the agent had salvaged from dead raiders—coming in late to sell scrap, rest and restock supplies before continuing on their way. They would ask about the caravans coming through as a means of getting information on an old contact of the Railroad, and try to learn what business it was the now-late informant had wanted seen to.

Knowing what he did about the SRB's own intelligence collecting practices, X6-88 had been somewhat amused to learn that the caravaneer, Stockton, had been one of the Railroad's key assets. At the same time, he had been mildly horrified that it had somehow escaped their notice. The idea that a lynchpin of their enemies' organization had been so closely tied to informants under the SRB's employ, and that somehow neither had been exposed only highlighted the absurdity inherent to the working of espionage.

It was a piece of intelligence he was somewhat reticent to share, unable to avoid thinking about what his superiors at the SRB would have said to giving sensitive information to their enemy. Still, the slightly sickened expression on Dee's face, however brief, when X6-88 shared his thoughts on the subject was firmly worth it.

"Damn," the agent had managed, shaking his head. "That _is_ a bit fucked up, isn't it?"

The Brotherhood's presence was strongly felt during their approach, and it only grew more so the farther they traveled into Charleston. Fortunately it was mostly dark by the time they were faced with the small unit of power armored sentries stationed on the bridge crossing the Charles River. If any of them had borne witness to X6-88's recent conflict with Brotherhood patrols, or if they had been given his description in reports of the encounter, none of them seemed to draw any connection with the man in mismatched leather armor standing silently behind his more fast-talking companion.

And it seemed he was beginning to get some inkling of Dee's personality, at least enough to tell that a joke was being made at the Brotherhood soldiers' expense. While X6-88 couldn't discern precisely why the names with which Dee introduced them were so amusing, he nevertheless managed to glean that the agent clearly believed they were very clever in some regard. 

X6-88 was not particularly inclined to waste his time puzzling out whether the names Ross Krantz and Gil Stern held any significant meaning or were merely another example of his companion's eccentric nonsense. Which was just as well, for the circumstances would have quickly rendered those efforts fruitless.

The SRB preferred its coursers to limit their exposure to civilians on the surface whenever possible, and when necessary encounters with their contracted assets were generally conducted at an isolated meeting place. X6-88 had therefore never had occasion to enter Bunker Hill before. He had made visits to other settlements in the past—to Diamond City, most recently, and a cleaning mission at University Point a few years prior—and his experiences had quickly lent him a strong distaste for doing so. Diamond City especially had been an unpleasant experience. Never before had X6-88 encountered wastelanders in such great numbers than in walking its cluttered streets. The smell of that many poorly washed humans, all gathered into so cramped a space, of garbage rotting in the gutters—and worse than garbage, in some of the back alleys he had used to pass through the city without attracting attention—had been overwhelming to his senses, even then. And the notion that the occupants of Diamond City were often accounted the most fortunate among the Commonwealth's human vermin—the idea that living such an existence was considered a _privilege_ —had only driven it further home to him how truly wretched they were.

Now...

The scent of brahmin—of their filth, of urine, of the animals themselves—heralded their proximity to the settlement long before its gates came into sight. As they grew closer, other smells became layered over it, transforming the air around them into a confusing collage. The scent of hot metal and machine grease, of engine smoke and fumes from the buzzing generators hazed the air. The sounds were there own presence in the atmosphere—the grating, whining, clanking noise of soldiers moving in armor, the whirring of turrets, the growling of motors and the ragged, shifting chaos of the _people_ squeezed into every corner of the fence encircling the old monument's confines. The moment they walked through the gates, X6-88 felt as if the sound closed over him like a wave—like he had been submerged in water over his head. And as he tried to focus—past the cacophony of smells and the discordant snarl of sounds—one thing among them managed to pull his focus amid his disarmed confusion.

The sound of so many hearts beating. The smell of their blood cutting through everything else. He was unprepared. He was drowning.

He _wanted_. Oh how he wanted...

Though he knew immediately that it was Dee, X6-88 still very nearly startled when he felt the man's hand fall on his shoulder.

"Steady..." Dee said quietly. "I know it's a lot. C'mon..."

X6-88 let himself be led to an area of the settlement that, if not much less crowded, was at least devoid of cattle and power armored traffic and therefore somewhat quieter. Two wastelanders stood behind a counter beneath a precariously constructed two-storied shack. Dee gave X6-88 a brief pat on the shoulder before sidling up to the older of the two men standing behind the counter.

"Hey, barkeep," he greeted them with a close-lipped smile. "My pal here's had a hard run tonight and we need a little something to shake the dust off. What do you recommend?"

"Top shelf item's moonshine," the waster answered. "But if you're a few caps shy, we got something with a kick alright. But I wouldn't recommend it."

"Moonshine it is," Dee said, shaking some bottle caps out onto the counter. "Here's a little extra if you let us wander off with the glasses for a while."

The man hefted an unconcerned shrug as he set a pair of glasses down on the bar.

"Wander all you like, then," he said, "just so long as I get them back. And if you two need a place to stay the night, talk to my boy."

"We'll see where the bottle takes us."

Dee waited as the two drinks were poured and he returned to where X6-88 was standing, handing him a short, chipped glass filled with some largely clear liquid.

"Here, stick this under your nose," Dee said. "It'll help distract from...well, you know."

X6-88 did as instructed but immediately recoiled.

"It smells vile."

Which, he belatedly realized, was almost certainly the point, yet still a part of him couldn't help but object on sheer principle.

"Fair enough," Dee said with a faint smirk, "but it's not going to kill you."

"I don't drink alcohol," X6-88 said with a frown.

Dee's wry expression broadened as he watched X6-88 over his own glass.

"You don't say?" he said. "Not even... _wine_?"

X6-88's frown deepened. There was a tone in the other's voice as there had been talking to the sentries at the bridge, one he was more than familiar with from working with humans in the Institute. The impenetrable smugness of a joke being made that the listener was neither expected nor intended to get. In the Institute, X6-88 would have been required to ignore it and pretend he hadn't noticed. In this instance, X6-88 decided that he _preferred_ to ignore it for the most part, though he allowed himself a flat stare at the Railroad agent which he thought left no question that he was aware of what the man was doing.

"If you wind up insensible," X6-88 told him, "don't expect me to carry you."

Dee offered him a cheeky smile.

"No threat of that," he reassured, downing the rest of his drink. Then he added, more quietly. "We can't actually get drunk, you know. At least not like this. Same with a lot of toxins and most chems. Needs to be...second hand, I guess is a good way of putting it. Which...we've actually been lucking out with the raiders, to be honest. A jet buzz mixes so well with the blood high you probably didn't even notice it, but not everything's that mellow. Usually they'll smell a bit...off if they've been using the really hard stuff. It's something you'll want to pay attention to."

X6-88 frowned, confused, though not by this apparent peculiarity of their aberrant biology, nor by the warning.

"Then...why?" he asked, sincerely baffled. "Why drink it at all?"

He had always found alcohol to be absolutely noxious, even before this strange ordeal. It made no sense to him why Dee would choose to imbibe when he couldn't partake of what, to X6-88's understanding, was the substance's sole arguable benefit.

"It's what's expected," Dee answered him quietly. He cast the wastelanders behind the bar a quick glance, but they were occupied with other business and paying them no attention. "Show up at a bar? Get a drink. Maybe get a bite to eat. Smoke a cigarette, flirt with whoever's beside you at the bar if it makes sense. As distasteful as it might sound, it probably wouldn't hurt for you to pick up a vice or two. It makes it a lot easier to blend in. Act like people, and folks tend to assume that you're people until you give them a reason not to."

Dee nudged X6-88 with an elbow and led him over to a large boulder taking up space within the settlment's perimeter. He sat down, and after a few moments X6-88 joined him. Dee leaned closer.

"Word might not have made it down to the Institute," he whispered with an exaggerated note of conspiratorial drama, "but the wasteland's full of monsters."

X6-88 couldn't help but huff a breath in amusement.

"It was noted," he acknowledged dryly.

He may have imagined it, but X6-88 thought he saw the wry twist on the agent's lips soften into something more sincere for just a moment.

"Well, yeah, all the weird mutants created after the War, sure," Dee said, "but there's much more than just that. I've seen a few things that would curl even a courser's toes and cause the undoubtedly very science-minded men of the Institute to clutch pearls and birth kittens just thinking they could exist."

The image invoked by those words was so improbable and bizarre that for a moment X6-88 had difficulty focusing on the rest of what Dee was saying.

"And I've heard rumors I couldn't prove of shit that was even weirder than that," Dee continued blithely. "Things older than the War—things stranger than us—waking up after years or centuries of sleep. Things that slipped in from somewhere outside of this formerly-blue little planet of ours after civilization left it's proverbial barn door hanging open."

"The shit people know about is only the tip of the iceberg," Dee said. "But people know _that_ , even if they don't know what they know. It's a whole new Dark Age, and humanity as a species didn't survive the previous ones by failing to notice when the shadows were looking to eat them. And that includes things like us, so it's in our best interest not to prove them right."

The agent's previously high spirits dimmed slightly and he sobered for a moment.

"For me, the pisser about our work in the Railroad was knowing that people are right to be scared and suspicious," he said. "The synths didn't deserve to have that fall on them, but there are worse things out there than even you and me, my friend..."

He was still for a moment, long enough that X6-88 wondered if he was done speaking. Amid the silence, X6-88 found his thoughts returning to the grim gallery on the North End, Dee's peculiar nerviness and his own uncharacteristic disquiet. For a few moments, he felt alarmingly hyperaware of the knife sheathed on the back of his belt. But after a stretch of silence, Dee shook himself out of whatever thoughts held their grip on him, and X6-88 endeavored to do the same.

"Anyway," Dee continued finally, "just because we don't need food to survive doesn't mean we shouldn't eat from time to time," he said. "For one, eating is something humans consider pretty important, especially up here where they don't always know where their next meal is coming from. People tend to notice when you don't join in. And sitting down for a meal with someone is one of the simplest ways of getting them to lower their guard."

He hefted a shrug.

"Hell, beyond that," Dee said, "I'm sure sometimes you'll just get bored. Or you'll miss things. But in my experience, keeping up the illusion carries its own rewards in helping remind you how normal human beings—or, you know, in your case—act and think. It's...a lot easier to start forgetting than you might think."

It was...a peculiar sentiment, X6-88 thought. And a disquieting one.

"So," Dee spoke up suddenly, nodding his head at the glass still held in X6-88's hand. "You gonna keep staring at that and make them wonder? What have you got to lose?"

X6-88 met the challenging stare the other was aiming his way—though he couldn't see the man's eyes directly, the challenge was visible in both the faint smile he wore and in his posture. X6-88 hesitated only a moment before downing the moonshine in his glass. It was a mistake. He coughed as the fluid burned it's way down his throat and into his stomach. When he looked up at Dee, the man's smile had only broadened.

"It tastes worse than it smells," X6-88 said hoarsely. "I hadn't believed that was possible."

"You'd be surprised," he said as he slipped the glass out of X6-88's fingers. "Anyway, it got your mind off of you know what, didn't it?"

X6-88 could admit to himself that it had, if only because at that moment the alcohol was all he could taste or smell. 

"By the way?" Dee told him as he stood, a hint of a smile showing on his lips. "A good tip next time the smell gets to be too much: Just don't breathe. That's not really something we actually have to do either."

X6-88 stared after him as he made his way to the bar to return the glasses to the older wastelander manning it. Running the conversation over again in his head, he was left with the peculiar feeling that the exchange had been...some sort of a test. Yet he wasn't entirely sure, if it was, whether it was one that he had passed or failed.

And he was still undecided when he noticed Dee approach the other man behind the bar—the elder man's son?—for conversation. As their stated plan had been to stop only for information and press on from Bunker Hill after, X6-88 hoped that meant that the agent had moved on towards conducting whatever business it was that they had needed to come for. X6-88 at first considered leaving him to attend it on his own, but after a moment he decided it might be better to involve himself more directly in whatever business it was the agent had seen fit to engage him in. Dee seemed not to object to the decision, as he merely greeted X6-88 with a nod on his approach.

"Hey," he said. "Was just asking Tony here about that job we heard about when we were down south. Looks like we're out of luck, though. Apparently the old guy running the caravans here was smuggling synths for the Railroad. Crazy, huh?"

Dee said it lightly enough that, had he not already been informed of the fact, X6-88 doubted he would have suspected the man he was speaking of had been a former colleague. Possibly a friend.

"It was some messed up business, alright," the wastelander—Tony—said. "Old Man Stockton had a bunch of runaways hidden out in the service tunnels under the monument. None of us suspected a thing until the Institute and the Brotherhood both showed up to storm the place."

Tony did little to hide his disquiet, and it seemed just recalling the event had him somewhat shaken.

"The suits busted in there and slaughtered them all," Tony said. "Then they took the Old Man up to that airship of theirs—for questions, they said. A couple weeks later I finally got up the courage to ask one of their low-ranked guys who stopped in for a drink. Said he didn't make it."

"Man, that's rough," Dee said, sympathetically. "So who's going to be running the caravans now, do you think? He leave any family behind?"

Tony looked away, clearly unsettled. The gesture quickly became a subtle scan of the area—likely to ensure none of the Brotherhood soldiers were nearby.

"He's got a daughter," Tony said, very quietly. "Amelia. But she hadn't been seen for about a week before the fighting happened. I think I heard someone say Stockton'd hired a merc to go looking along the trade routes up north where she went missing. But I ain't heard no word since on if he ever found anything..."

Dee frowned thoughtfully for a moment.

"Well, since the job fell through, me and my friend were planning on continuing north after stocking up," Dee told him. "Maybe we can keep an ear out, bring back word if we hear something."

Tony looked him over speculatively. After a moment he leaned in closer.

"If you do," Tony said quietly, anxiously, "and if you find her... Give her my best, but don't bring her back here. It ain't safe for her here, not with the Brotherhood in charge. If you find her and she's okay...let me know about it so she can stay in touch, but don't bring her here."

"You got it," Dee promised him with a solemn nod. Then he looked to X6-88. "C'mon. Let's get our other business done with and move on."

As they stepped away, headed for the monument's central market, X6-88 stopped him.

"The missing woman," he asked, "is she the business you came here to see to?"

Dee nodded.

"Probably," he said. "Even if she wasn't...I owe it to Stockton to look for her. He did a lot for synths and for the Railroad. Made a lot of sacrifices—the big one in the end."

Though solemn, he didn't strike X6-88 as being...quite as strongly affected by the idea of his colleague's fate as he might have expected.

"Hell," he said, "even if I didn't owe him that...we'd both owe it to Amelia to find out what happened, if you get what I'm saying."

It took him a moment, but X6-88 easily caught his meaning just fine.

A runaway synth. It...felt odd to think about. His original purpose had been all but forgotten in the wake of the Institute's destruction, set aside, first in the name of mere survival, then in the name of revenge. And yet, here he was being offered the prospect of fulfilling that purpose once again. A retention mission, albeit with a former Railroad agent at his side. Perhaps it was by virtue of being so mundane in everyother respect that the notion managed to feel far more surreal than any of the other more viscerally unusual changes that had so recently gripped his life.

"I see," he said. "Then...in that case, we shouldn't delay."

He managed to deliver the words with his usual composure, but it was the first time he could say he felt truly eager for anything beyond sating his new hunger since this strange ordeal began.

"Yeah," Dee agreed. "We can ask around with some of the traders to try to learn more about Amelia's route, grab a few essentials and head out. Got plenty of ground to cover before daylight."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was a lot of talking and not a lot of doing. I can promise more action in the next chapter. Which hopefully won't be _too_ long a wait.


	5. A Loose End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> X6-88 and Dee leave Bunker Hill in search of Amelia, but an unexpected encounter on the road soon tests the delicate trust between them. 
> 
> (And X6-88 discovers a new, though previously hinted, constraint of his condition in perhaps the worst possible way...)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to blame the tardiness of this chapter on my continued computer woes (still using an Xbox as my primary word processor...ugh), which, yeah, that's definitely part of it, but if I'm completely honest, the real delay has been letting myself get sidetracked by an obsession with _Half Life VR But the AI Is Self Aware_ (a gloriously chaotic clusterfuck of improv machinema you can find on Youtube, and that I highly recommend ruining your life by watching).
> 
> Also, this is the chapter where a few of the tags really start to become relevant, so keep that in mind going in.

X6-88 had hung back, leaving Dee to handle their interactions with the traders and other inhabitants of Bunker Hill. It had taken only a handful of carefully obscured questions—casually offered amid conversation with a couple of loitering caravan guards in return for a few cigarettes—to learn more about the missing Amelia. She had been accompanying a caravan up north, following one of the more easily traversable stretches of road accessing the sparse settlements and struggling farmsteads scattered across the northern end of the Commonwealth. But this had been over a month ago. Neither Amelia nor any other member of that caravan had ever reported in. Though their absence had been the subject of concern at the time, the first inquiries had been made only days prior to the explosion of conflict in Bunker Hill. In the weeks that followed, Stockton's arrest had thrown the settlement and its caravans into significant disarray.

While the traders still went about their business, it appeared as if there were neither resources nor attention to spare on a caravan already written off as dead. Particularly now that the Stockton name had been blackened by the old man's associations with the Railroad. It seemed that the accusation of "synth lover" carried a definite stain to it—a stain that it seemed few would comfortably run the risk of having rub off on them.

(And if it might serve the interests of the surviving traders of Stockton's outfit to have Amelia's fate, as the proper heir to her father's affairs, remain unknown, it seemed that was itself a topic people had neither the time nor the stomach to talk about.)

Dee passed off the collection of junk and chems—salvaged variously from the bodies of dead raiders and from the musty confines of the abandoned apartment—to a tired-looking trader in exchange for moderately more respectable leather armor for both of them, and a modest handful of caps. He purchased more ammunition for their reclaimed weapons and a few canisters of water, and a small amount of non-perishable food—likely for Amelia, should they find her alive. The supplies were tossed with little care into Dee's dufflebag on top of X6-88's folded courser armor, and then they set out through the back gate, heading north.

Their late departure—for it was now well into the evening—had earned them the confused and suspicious eye of a few of the Brotherhood sentries stationed on the perimeter of the settlement, but they were neither stopped nor questioned as they went on their way. The previous day's radstorm had blown through quickly, and the wind had shifted, now coming in off of the river. And it occurred to X6-88 for the first time that, this late, the wind from the water should have carried a noticeable chill. If he had been wearing his usual coat, he might not have noticed easily, but X6-88 was wearing only a threadbare flannel shirt and a pair of ragged jeans under the...wastelander camouflage that he wore as a pretense at armor. Yet he thought that the air seemed instead rather...neutrally mild. He realized that the only vivid sensations of temperature he had experienced since his waking had been from the blood on which he fed, and the penetrating hollow cold that seemed to represent its lack. Remembering briefly the sensation of icy fingers on his skin, even chilled then as he had been from blood loss, he was left to wonder just how much the warmth of his own body even differed from that of the cool night air around him.

He was lost in this peculiar run of thoughts when a sound caught his attention—a sound that Dee had clearly heard as well, for the agent stilled suddenly beside him, listening.

"Shit," Dee muttered, eyes lifting to the sky. "Vertibird incoming..."

They had been following the road that ran along the river's edge ever since Bunker Hill, approaching the Tucker Memorial bridge to make the crossing north. That bridge still stood several yards away. Apart from the broken overpass nearby, it was mostly open space save for a few trees and shrubs growing on the river's edge. They soon saw the approaching vehicle, its lights visible in the sky to the northwest. A brief gesture from Dee signalled X6-88 follow, and they crouched down behind one of the larger trees, just wide enough to provide them both with cover. They watched the vertibird draw nearer, soon settling down over the cracked remains of the ruined crossroad to prepare for a landing. A small squad disembarked: a uniformed scribe, a figure in combat armor, and the bulky form of a power armored soldier wielding some manner of ungainly, underslung, and incredibly heavy looking weapon.

Though it was not, X6-88 noted distantly, the same model of armor he had seen on the majority of the Brotherhood's soldiers that he had encountered since they had arrived to infest the Commonwealth. The lines of the suit were far more rounded—more streamlined, and with a rather insectoid profile. The lamps of the helmet shone from the eyes rather than a single light on the side. And instead of the regulation markings, the plating of this armor was instead a blank and uniform grey, the metal brighter and more reflective than the usual dull sheen of naked steel.

An animalistic rumble the likes of which X6-88 would never have imagined himself capable trickled forth from his throat before he even consciously realized who he was looking at.

 _Walker_. It _had_ to be...

He felt Dee's hand come down on his shoulder once again, this time tightening hard enough to hurt. X6-88 pulled his attention away to where the agent was staring at him with a frown.

"Don't," Dee whispered, shaking his head. "It's not worth it. Not right now."

And X6-88 found himself unaccountably angry to have been seen through so easily. For the agent to have gleaned so readily what bloody desires his mind had focused on in that moment, so close to seeing themselves realized... He clenched his fists at his side.

"Once the vertibird is gone," X6-88 insisted. "They'll be out of range of backup then. Just a lightly armored scribe and one soldier, and the second highest ranked member of the Brotherhood."

"We need a plan before we can start even thinking of taking on-"

"The Sentinel," X6-88 ground out, interrupting him. " _Walker_."

Dee had stilled, casting a long glance at the figures in the distance where the vertibird was now lifting off, back into the air. He thought he could almost smell the agent's indecision then. Though his eyes were still covered by the sunglasses, X6-88 couldn't help but read his expression as a sort of savage longing... But Dee shook his head again.

"I thought you wanted to take the fight to them," X6-88 pushed. "When are we going to get a better chance?"

"When we _make_ one," Dee said. Looking over X6-88 again, at length he sighed. "This isn't you. It's the predator talking. I know a courser's got to have better sense than that."

Dee turned back and watched the figures where they began their march—slow, to keep pace with the Sentinel's ponderous armored step—along the road where it parted west.

"Look, I can't say I'm not a bit tempted," Dee said, "but it's way too early to risk tipping our hand like that. Sure, maybe we get him—and that's a _big_ maybe—but then the Brotherhood is going to be on the alert. It'll make doing the rest of the job that much harder. It could get both of us killed if we're not careful. Have some patience. We both want revenge, but we've got to be smart about it. It's not worth throwing our lives away on the first chance we get."

"The revenge you promised me is the only reason I _have_ a life to lose," X6-88 said. "Taking Walker down with me would be a life profitably spent."

And Dee looked at him then with what he thought might have been the most transparent expression X6-88 had seen from the moment he first met him. An expression of slack, horrified shock, sickened and perhaps just ever so slightly helpless. It was visible for barely a fraction of a second before it was shuttered behind a mask of manufactured calm. Dee's body had taken on that unsettling stillness, as if his shock had cut too deeply for him to continue his seeming of being conventionally alive. But though his posture was frozen and the rest of his face suddenly, inhumanly blank, X6-88 still thought he saw the agent's jaw tighten.

" _No_ ," Dee said.

The word was not said very loudly. It had not even been spoken especially harshly. But there was a low, strange sound to it that X6-88 felt somehow seemed to move _through_ him. It felt like being plunged into ice cold water. His own body froze and his thoughts grew distant, and for a moment he found that not only could he not move, but he couldn't even think of moving, as if the impulse were stalled in his mind like an urgently needed word refusing to reach the tip of his tongue. And there was a moment of desperate panic where, deep within whatever parts of his mind were still functioning, X6-88 was sure that he knew what was happening. Afterall, hadn't he seen this—hadn't he _done this_ —before?

( _Initialize factory reset. Authorization code..._ )

But he hadn't been disabled, not fully. He was merely frozen—unable to act, unable to move his body against the sudden, frightening weight of the Railroad agent's will that had seemingly thrown itself over his own like a blanket. It was an uncomfortable, unsettling feeling. Invasive. Impossibly, it somehow felt as if some part of the agent had found its way into his own head... Thinking back suddenly on the earliest hours of his strange new existence—of how he had allowed the man to invade his space without protest, the way he had allowed himself to be led, to be goaded into concessions against his usual inclinations, of his inexplicable feelings of guilt as he pondered deceiving him back in the apartment hovel, as if he somehow owed the man his allegiance—X6-88 began to suspect that this unsettling, unwelcome presence may have been there from the very beginning.

His frustration then lent its weight to his frustration now, and behind both of them, still, the momentum of X6-88's anger—at Walker, but now, also, at Dee for seeking to deprive him of the chance to tear the Institute's betrayer apart. It boiled up inside him, twisting within the cold, hollow cavity in his chest into something sharp and bright, something _piercing_ , that managed to burn its way through the smothering weight of the will being forced on him. Just enough—only _just_ enough—to speak.

" _Let_. _Go_."

The words fought him even as he spoke, emerging as something clipped and flat. Still, somehow the words had a very clear impact on Dee. From the way he recoiled, the words might as well have been a physical blow, and the Railroad agent took a quick step back in what X6-88 thought might have been alarm. As he did so, X6-88 felt whatever hold he had been under release itself...

X6-88 turned immediately on his heel and bolted. He didn't allow himself any second thoughts, charging in a full sprint, every molecule of his being consumed in that moment with only three things:

Blood, vengeance, and _Sentinel Nathan Walker_.

X6-88's feet tread lightly over the intervening ground, even at a run. The small squad ahead of him failed to note his presence as he took cover behind one of the large concrete supports of the nearby overpass. X6-88 dropped to one knee and began to line up his shot. The rifle Dee had found for him lacked a scope, but his eyes were sharper now than even the Institute's superior design had made them, improved even in the dark. And he could make out the faint light of the fusion core powering the Sentinel's armor. Despite his excitement, despite his run, his hands were steady.

And it was no difficulty all to hold his breath for the shot when, as Dee had told him, there was no need to _breathe_.

The bullet hit home with a sharp metallic _ping_ , and was followed by the high, shrill sound of a warning inside the suit beginning to beep. The two men on either side of Walker turned, alert in the wake of the gunshot, and X6-88 briefly saw their wide-eyed scan of the night around them before he ducked back behind the support. He could hear panicked shouts as the beeping grew faster and his suspicions about the armored suit's occupant was quickly confirmed as he heard the sound of Walker's voice, buzzing through the speakers of the helmet.

" _I'm ejecting, take cover!_ "

From his cover X6-88 saw the more lightly armored rifleman at Walker's side make a run for distance, ducking behind the rusted, skeletal wreck of an old car nearby. There was a mechanical whirr and then a sound of released air and X6-88 saw the fizzing remains of the ruptured fusion core land in the middle of the fractured road. It detonated seconds later, the small nuclear blast sending up a cloud of dust and chunks of asphalt. X6-88 shuddered as nausea poured through him, the burn of the rads against his skin momentarily making his hands shake. He swallowed thickly against bile and blood threatening to escape his stomach and pushed through, peering around the corner of the highway support as he readied his next shot.

Without the core powering the armor's mechanisms, Walker could barely lift the heavy, multi-lasered assembly of his weapon high enough to aim. Dodging would be nearly impossible. Steadying himself against the tremors and the sickness, X6-88 focused his sights on the thin rubberized seal where the suit and helmet were joined. His first shot ricocheted off the high armored collar. Close. He pulled the bolt, chambering the next round.

" _Scribe, I need a new core. Mac, cover him!_ "

The scribe took shelter behind the power armor's bulk. X6-88 shifted his focus, firing at a flash of movement between the metal suited legs. He heard a scream and saw the scribe fall to the ground clutching his leg. The smell of blood, fresh and arterial, blossomed brightly into the air. It was wasted, however—in more ways than one—because a mechanical whir and a sharp _clunk_ signalled the scribe's success as Walker's armor woke back to life. X6-88 swore to himself. His main advantage gone, he would need to end Walker's life quickly or else flee. Hoping for the former, he leaned out for another shot, trained this time on the seal at the inside of the Sentinel's armored elbow. He saw the rubber tear—a graze, but a deep one, trickling fluids just as likely to be hydrolic as biological in origin. Either way, it disrupted Walker's control of the heavy laser weapon. His aim was thrown off center and the barrage of red energy went wide, taking X6-88 in the meat of his thigh rather than the center of his chest. Even as pain tore through him, radiating in throbbing waves, he considered the shot a success...

He barely caught the faint glint of moonlight from the lens of a scope off near the rusted car before the air was split by a sharp _crack_ and his vision went white.

X6-88 fell back into the dirt, his ears ringing. Pain screamed in his head, burned in his leg, simmered in his skin and dove in deep where he felt what little warmth he could be said to have draining from his core. He couldn't see more than vague, almost shapeless shadows, but he could hear the heavy, mechanized steps drawing nearer as Walker closed in. He rolled over onto his hands and knees, unseeing but desperately searching for the rifle that had fallen from his hands. He had only just closed his hand around it when he heard another explosion. It was far enough away that he couldn't feel the heat on his face, but whatever it had been seemed to demand more of Walker's attention.

Or perhaps not the explosion itself, but the screams...

" _Shit- Mac? MacCready?!_ "

When he heard those heavy footsteps begin retreating rapidly X6-88 tried to rise to his feet, but he failed even to get his right leg underneath him. He heard a sound nearby—a skittering of debris underfoot, a faint electronic _hum_ —and tensed, fumbling to move his hand to the rifle's trigger. But those sounds were all he heard—no breathing, no pulse, and when he felt an unseen hand close on his arm his unconscious instinct was to relax into it rather than startle. He knew who it was.

"How's goin', bud?"

Dee's quiet, tense words came from close to his ear, but he couldn't even see the shadow of where his face had to be.

"Took a head shot..." X6-88 grit out weakly. "Can barely see..."

"Alright," the agent said quietly. "I've got you. Just follow me."

Dee's grip tightened, and X6-88 felt himself being hauled up onto his feet. His right arm was pulled up over Dee's shoulder, and he felt a hand at his waist, clipping something to his belt. There was a click, and soon he felt static stir along the surface of his skin. He recognized the hum belatedly, remembering the two StealthBoys he had seen in Dee's cache. X6-88 let himself be dragged away from the fight, battling the pain in his leg and his head with every step. His head hurt, but the agony in his leg was something else, a burn that constantly shifted, rose and fell, and-

"Shit-" He heard Dee swear sharply under his breath as the agent maneuvered him along. "Okay, don't step there. Or...there. Careful! Easy... Over this way... That's...yeah. Watch your footing, the bridge is, uh... _slippery_?"

X6-88 could smell gasoline.

Once or twice, X6-88 felt himself tugged violently to correct his course, jarring his leg and drawing forth an almost animal hiss of pain. The rhythmic clanking of Walker's pursuit began to catch up to them, and once their StealthBoys wore off Dee shoved him down, his face nearly meeting with the asphalt, to duck a barrage of scattered laserfire. The Sentinel had to be close behind them...

"Shit," Dee swore as he dragged X6-88 back onto his feet. "We need to haul ass, _now!_ "

X6-88 grit his teeth against the agony flaring in his leg as they broke into a desperate and clumsy run. And he still couldn't see, but he could hear each slow, crashing footstep behind him. He could hear the whir of the servos in Walker's weapon begin to rotate the barrel assembly, and the high whine of the charge loading in its capacitors. And he heard those sounds stop suddenly, heard the steps stutter to a halt and the weapon spin down into silence, and Walker's voice, crackling and distorted but audibly flat with shock.

" _What_ -"

An explosion split the air near the far end of the bridge. Then another. X6-88 felt the bridge shake beneath them. Even as they ran he felt the sudden heat of flames rising up around them, and the dark, smudged world in his eyes erupted into red.

Even once they emerged past the red haze of heat, the smell of smoke—of burning fuel and spent explosives—hovered caustically in the air. X6-88 stumbled on shaking legs, falling to his knees, and his weight brought Dee down with him. In the first moments X6-88 could do little more than lie in tense agony as he fought against the pain won by over-exerting his damaged limbs, but he was aware of the agent as the other rose into a crouch, focus palpably aimed towards the bridge.

Though his head was still an inferno of pain, his vision had at least begun to clear. Enough for X6-88 to see the bulky shadow amid the red of the flames. Enough to see it stumble, clumsily, shakily, _burning_ to the edge of the bridge before plunging itself into the dark cold water of the river. He heard Dee draw in a shaking breath.

"Well. Shit," he said, the stunned words just a near-vacant mumble under his breath. "Okay."

X6-88 screwed his eyes shut—against the pain, and against the dawning knowledge of his failure.

"He won't be dead," X6-88 ground out.

Dee let out a snort. Though nominally similar to his usual expression of amusement, it was so blatantly lacking in humor as to render it a parody.

"Nah," he said lifelessly. "Fucker couldn't make our lives that easy."

X6-88 felt Dee's elbow nudge him slightly, felt a hand close tightly on his shoulder.

"C'mon," Dee said, hauling X6-88 to his feet once more. "He's going to be pissed once he drags himself out of the water. And we really don't want to be here when he does."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because when you're a synthetic super assassin who's recently become a vampire, the Kill Bill sirens are pretty intense.
> 
> P.S. I promise MacCready's not dead. He's just a little bit...on fire.
> 
> P.P.S. The Tucker Memorial Bridge is some evil bullshit, okay? Seriously fuck whatever dev designed that nightmare.


	6. Out of the Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dee and X6-88 find a dark spot to hide—from the sun and from Walker—and begin to recover from their encounter. 
> 
> Dee has some explaining to do, and for once X6-88 has...quite a lot to say about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The following is a long, almost aimless ramble of two men supremely ill-suited at communicating with each other coming to the simultaneous realization that they've each vastly underestimated just how much of a mess the other is behind their stylish shades.

It was slow going after that, but with the urgency removed from their flight at least they could afford to move slowly and with care. Given the severity of his injuries, X6-88 doubted much progress could have been made in any other manner. 

As they continued following the road north, they eventually came across the decaying remains of an old boathouse built on the river. Though it might have made for tempting shelter otherwise, the Brotherhood was likely to send a vertibird out searching for the party responsible for the attack on its Sentinel. Located on the edge of the water, the boathouse was far too visible, too attractive a piece of shelter not to fall prey to the search. Additionally, Dee informed him that the roof had fallen in, and the windows had been busted out of the place long ago. It wouldn't provide near enough cover from sunlight come dawn. 

Instead they left the house behind, and Dee led him to a drainage canal nearby. A short slog through ankle-deep muck brought them to a large, reeking section of rusted pipe. X6-88 had energy for only a token protest when Dee insisted that they make their way further inside. Eventually they came to a hatch cover, which opened up into some kind of underground maintenance facility. The interior was flooded thigh-high with stagnant water, and to no degree of surprise it stank strongly of rust, radiation, and decay. When they first entered he heard a faint sound—a brief, fluttering, droning buzz—but it quickly settled back into silence. Dee helped X6-88 out of the water and guided him to sit down on a narrow set of crumbling brick steps. 

X6-88's vision had recovered marginally by then. His eyes were...functional, but any attempts to focus his sight inspired a near-debilitating amount of pain. He had thought, when it had first happened, that the wound must have been a simple graze. Yet the extremity of his continued pain—along with Dee's ambivalently useful description of the injury, and the agent's surprisingly diligent efforts to keep him from touching it to make an assessment of his own—had finally led X6-88 to doubt that was truly the case. He wasn't sure how that was possible, but at this point it was just one more way in which his changed biology departed from what his—admittedly cursory, by Institute standards—understanding of basic science suggested would make sense. 

X6-88 had been left sitting for a few short moments—given the chance to catch his breath, if only figuratively—when Dee returned, sitting on the steps just above him. 

"Here." 

X6-88 opened his eyes a crack, and it took him a few seconds to identify the pale, blurry shape in front of his face as Dee's forearm, the sleeve pulled back to bare his wrist. He turned to look up at the man, staring half-unseeing into his face. 

"Drink," Dee said, pushing his arm forward. "It'll help you heal up." 

X6-88 just watched him, tired, uncertain, _wary_. As his hesitation stretched on, Dee saw fit to make his offer entirely clear by biting into the flesh himself. And when it was placed back under his nose, the offering was much more difficult to ignore, and almost impossible for him to resist. X6-88 didn't try for long. 

Dee's blood was measurably different from that of the raiders they had killed together. It was cold, for one, and the pulse bringing it to the surface was sluggish and irregular. Overall, it lacked the energy—the enlivening _rush_ —that had made the blood of his kills so pleasurable. He felt his own heart beat only once—lazily, a dull twist in his chest that was very nearly painful. And yet there was an indescribable... _potency_ to it that the blood of the raiders had lacked. An unsettling draw that held...some manner of vague promise he could not readily define. 

As he fed, there was a moment where X6-88 felt the agent's hand on the back of his head. The touch was very light, gentle even, and brief enough that X6-88 couldn't be sure he wasn't imagining it. Perhaps he had merely been inspecting the wound once more. Yet something about it oddly called to mind the manner with which he had seen humans in the Institute interact with their children. It was...such a strange association to make in that moment and so uncharacteristic of himself that, in light of his recent experiences with Dee, X6-88 had to wonder if the thought was even one that he could trust had fully been his own. 

X6-88 bristled at the thought. On top of the question of Dee's potential intrusion into his mind, the idea of being treated or thought of as a child was an especially offensive one. And the fact that his emotional...intemperance back at the bridge, his recklessness and his refusal to pay heed to Dee's caution, had cost him so much pain only compounded his frustration. A part of him—the part that had always ridden him hard for any flaw that might see him found wanting—admonished the impulsiveness of his actions as reflecting the behavior of a child, which placed against his earlier determination not to behave like an _animal_ seemed little better. And the fact that, in this moment, there seemed yet another part of himself—one he barely recognized, let alone was ready to trust—that seemingly desired to take refuge in...Dee—in his presence, in the offered balm of his blood however peculiar—was perhaps the most difficult, most _baffling_ part. He was unaccustomed to vulnerability on this front. The last thing he should have wanted was to have his weakness _indulged_... 

X6-88 felt wetness on his face. Sitting back he swiped at his cheek with fingers that came away red. 

"I'm...bleeding again..." he said, with a sort of dull alarm. 

His own voice sounded...oddly distant. 

"No," Dee corrected softly. "You're crying." 

Anger ignited in his chest and X6-88 shoved the agent away from himself, fighting the agony still burning in his leg in order to rise to his feet. He stumbled down the steps, but came to a quick and unsteady halt at the water's edge. Though it seemed his leg pained him no less his vision had cleared significantly. He looked out over the black, filth-strewn lake that dominated the dark rotting hole they had taken as their refuge. He knew that there was no point in leaving. Where would he go? Dawn wouldn't be that far off by now, and there was no guarantee he would find shelter before the sunrise left him even more helpless than he already was. 

"I hate this." 

It was...such a simple thing to say, quiet and tense, yet X6-88 realized as he said it that he was shaking. He drew his arms tight around his chest, struggling to wrestle some manner of control over his body. The tension seemed only to grow with the effort. 

" _I hate this_ ," he said again, more harshly this time, the words half-choked as they fought their way out. "I hate this _place_. The Commonwealth is dying a slow death, and its no less than the scum living in it deserve. Its inhabitants are fooling themselves in thinking they can achieve _anything_ of meaning. Nothing will ever elevate them above this...filth, and _decay_. I hate the smell of it. I always did, and now it smells _worse_." 

He turned, looking up the stairs to the man responsible, if not for the Commonwealth's evils, or for the destruction of his home, then at least for the current, unbalancing circumstances under which his time weathering these indignities had been unexpectedly—perhaps cruelly—prolonged. 

"I hate everything about it, and I hate _you_." 

There was a pointed emphasis on the last word that escaped the taut, strangled, but otherwise even tone that he had only narrowly managed to maintain through the majority of his tirade. The object of that emphasis was now watching him intently, though the tenor of his attention was difficult to gauge behind the practiced, bland expression he wore and the impenetrable barrier of his sunglasses. And he was silent for a long moment— _just_ watching—before he spoke. 

"Wow, X6," Dee said slowly. "Don't hold back. Tell me how you really feel." 

X6-88 just stared at him for a long moment, at a loss for how to react when _that_ was the other man's response. When that failed and the silence stretched on, Dee spoke up again. 

"C'mon," he said, standing to begin his climb of the steps. "If you're done here-" 

"No." 

Dee stopped in his tracks and turned. X6-88 watched him run a hand over the short-cropped hair on his scalp, a flicker of...something crossing his face, too quickly to even begin to interpret its meaning. He let his arm drop. 

"Fine," he said. "You actually want to talk about it? I'll be the first to admit I'm not great at the whole 'feelings talk', but if it's what you need, pal, I'm game. Let's talk." 

When X6-88 failed to speak—and, truthfully, X6-88 had no idea what it was the other man expected from him—Dee lowered himself back to his seat on the steps. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and looked back down to where X6-88 stood at the edge of the water. 

"It wasn't your fault, you know," Dee said softly. "Not really. It's... Part of this is on me." 

"This shit can be...raw in the early days," Dee began haphazardly. "I know that. I _knew_ that. I should've remembered. But I...didn't think. It was... It's a part of my life I spent a lot of time trying _not_ to think about. And..." 

He trailed off a moment before his own silence was broken by a nervous laugh. 

"Shit," he said at last, shaking his head. "It was such a _long_ time ago." 

"But… I _should've_ thought about it," he continued. "About how...hard it is to deal with. I mean, the hunger, and the instincts, and all the other bullshit that goes on in your head at the start. It's...a lot. And it's not like you don't already have plenty of reason to be a bit fucked up right now- I mean, you really don't make it obvious, but you're probably still fucking grieving, aren't you?" 

Dee let out a lifeless snort. The corner of his mouth twisting with some wry, bitter sentiment that X6-88 couldn't have begun to give a name to. 

"I mean, shit, we both are," Dee said, "but I'm still at that stage where I'm trying not to deal with it. If you're getting past that point, more power to you. You do what you gotta do." 

X6-88 was barely able to contain the rage he felt at the comparison. 

"How dare you," X6-88 said, glaring, his voice falling into a venomous rasp. "How dare you think the deaths of a few uneducated rabble hiding in a basement is in any way equivalent to the tragedy the Institute's demise represents to the world. You have no mind for the scale of what I've lost—of what this _world_ has lost!" 

And X6-88 was vaguely aware that his intent with these words was partially to antagonize the other—perhaps even into violence, to seek some relief from what he was feeling in a way he had been better trained to accommodate. X6-88 was entirely unprepared for the sudden outburst of jagged laughter that his words earned him instead. It was... He didn't have words. There was something...visceral about it that almost sounded _pained_. 

Dee lifted his sunglasses briefly to wipe under his eyes with his thumb which he then licked clean. 

"You think I don't get it?" Dee asked quietly—so quietly after the outburst that it was startling. "I mean, not that I like playing the game of who has the bigger sad, but this isn't the first time my whole fucking world has ended. Shit, it's not even the third or fourth." 

Dee took a slow, steady breath that by now X6-88 had come to understand was more a form of verbal punctuation than from any respiratory need. 

"Tell me, X6," Dee said, "how old do you think I am?" 

The question made no sense. 

"Why does that matter?" X6-88 asked. 

"I guess it doesn't," Dee admitted. "Not really. I mean, there are plenty of people out there who know exactly what it's like to see your entire world go up in a god-damned mushroom cloud. I'm not special in that regard. I'm just a whole lot prettier than most folks in my age group." 

The implication in his words was not difficult for X6-88 to decode, however the claim he was making was ludicrous. 

"You expect me to believe you are over two-hundred years old?" 

"I don't _expect_ you to believe anything I say, X," Dee said. "In fact, you're already ahead of the curve in not trusting me. Sooner or later everyone figures out that a lot of what I say is bullshit. Part of it came from my job with the Railroad. Part of it's from earlier. What I am—what we are—before the War, you needed to be able to hide, one way or another, if you wanted to survive. And, fucking honestly, a lot of it is just me being a dumb asshole who doesn't know how to trust anybody." 

He paused briefly, perhaps considering his words—some necessary internal rearrangement as he tried to reestablish his sincerity after having outright called himself a liar. 

"But," Dee continued quietly, words parceled out deliberately, "the Railroad is gone, and you're already a part of the only other secret I have that's actually worth the effort of keeping. So, I might not be the most forthcoming with information, because there's just...there's _a lot of shit_ that I'd honestly like not to think about or remember, let alone explain, but I'm feeling just slightly less compelled than usual to actually lie. And if you believe nothing else that I tell you during our time together, I'd want it to be this: I will never flat out _lie_ to you about what we are or about how it works. After bringing you into this, it just wouldn't be right to lie about that." 

"Then answer one question for me honestly," X6-88 challenged him. "What did you do to me back at the bridge?" 

Dee stilled briefly and he looked away, his shielded gaze aimed off into the corners of the room...as if there were anything in this wretched place worth looking at. 

"Yeah..." Dee said quietly, and his voice was leeched entirely of its usual irreverence and energy. "That was...pretty high on my list of things I don't think about...but… I guess we really do need to talk about that..." 

Dee leaned forward where he sat, elbows still propped on his knees as he rested his chin on his hands. What could be seen of his expression below his glasses struck X6-88 as...pensive. Thoughtful. 

"I didn't mean to," Dee began. "That's not...an apology, though I owe you that too, just...a fact. I've never done this before. You know..." 

He gestured weakly between the two of them. 

" _This_ ," he said to clarify. "I'd never... _changed_ someone to be like me. But I knew—from experience I _really_ wish I could forget—what kind of influence that would give me over you. I never meant to use it, though. I mean...someone told me, once upon a time, that it wasn't something that could be avoided, but you can only hear that so many times before it starts to sound like...someone's making excuses for themself." 

Dee pulled that thought up short, shaking his head in silence before he continued. 

"Doesn't matter," Dee said. "I should have- I _would_ have told you that part first, before I gave you my blood back in the graveyard, if I'd had the choice. But you were bleeding out and we really _didn't_ have that sort of time. And after that...I just sort of hoped that it would never come up. Because I never meant to use it. I knew the potential was there, but I didn't think it was something it was possible to do _by mistake_." 

He let out a lifeless laugh. 

"Joke's on both of us, right?" 

"I...see," was all X6-88 managed in response. 

It was more of a confirmation of his own voiced suspicions than any new information about Dee's influence or what it entailed, but...for good or ill, the man had given him the bare minimum of what he had asked for. If the topic was truly so difficult for Dee to think about—if that explanation was even one that should be believed—X6-88 didn't know if he was _ready_ to ask for more... 

"I gave you the choice," Dee said softly after a moment. "Do you think you'd choose different, knowing what you do now?" 

"The alternative was death," X6-88 said. 

Dee hitched a shrug. 

"Which was still a valid choice," Dee said. "Not that I'm saying you should rather be dead, but...there's a lot to buy into with this, and I never would have forced it on you if I'd had my way. I mean, shit, you just got free of the _Institute_ , the last thing I want is to try and exert control over you. Believe me, that was never what the Railroad was about." 

In the moment, X6-88 couldn't help the expression of vague disgust that contorted his lips—at Dee's framing of the Institute's destruction, as if X6-88 were somehow better for its loss. It stung, and in that moment X6-88 yielded to the petty impulse to see the agent bleed for it. 

"I seem to possess less agency in your company than I ever had in my duties to the Institute," X6-88 said evenly. "Regardless of your intentions, in practice is this not just an exchange of masters?" 

And he had spoken those words to cut the other man, but that didn't mean they were wholly untrue either. 

There was something about the way the other man's will had encroached on his own that left him feeling... _incensed_ was the only word he could find. He was not, afterall, unfamiliar with the notion of having the contents of his mind accessed or manipulated. He had never had the luxury of regarding his sense of self as something sacrosanct the way that a human might. The specter of a reset—of _failing_ so badly that your superiors might see fit to wipe clean everything you had trained for and achieved—had loomed ever-present within the Institute, and every courser lived in fear of such disgrace. The fear that a single mistake might be all that stood between his career as a courser and being returned to the lineup of undistinguished synths with no memory that he had ever been deemed worthy of any duty greater than that of mopping a floor was as familiar to him as his own shadow. 

No, what disturbed him so much about the control that Dee had demonstrated was how subtle it had been. Until the incident at the bridge, X6-88 had never consciously realized it was there, but now he was almost sure he could feel it—just the faint outline of something that _shouldn't be there_ lurking at the back of his mind. A space conspicuous more than anything else for what it _wasn't_. Because even now that he had good reason to believe he knew where it had come from, the only thing of which he was truly certain was that it represented some part of his mind that somehow wasn't actually his anymore, like an exploit inserted into his code. 

At least when a synth was wiped and reprogrammed both the cause and the result were unmistakable. With something this...invasive, this _insidious_ , if Dee ever did choose to put pressure on it again—with _purpose_ , utilizing the full cunning X6-88 knew the man possessed—how could he ever truly be sure he would know the difference? 

Meanwhile, his words seemed to have been well aimed. For a long moment Dee sat, still and silent, unable or unwilling to refute them. 

"No," Dee said finally. "No, it's not. Because neither of us is going to _let_ it be." 

The words were quiet, but insistent. 

"You'll develop a...resistance to it over time," Dee said. "Just like with the sun. It took...years, for me, but I was-" 

He cut himself off, shaking his head. 

"No," he said, "I bet it won't take you anywhere near that long. In the meantime...knowing it can happen on accident just means I have to spend more effort on purpose making sure that I don't, right?" 

Despite his insistence, there was a hint of uncertainty, one which seemed to draw Dee to a pause. 

"Though, with the caveat-" Dee stopped himself, shaking his head. "No, not even a caveat, just a heartfelt request that- I mean. It'd be a lot easier to commit to not smothering your free will if you could avoid pointlessly throwing your life away in front of me. Not saying my response was... _great_ , it really wasn't, but that'd be... Could you just not do something like that again? It might make it _really_ hard for me to keep my word." 

There was an attempt with these words to invoke his usual flippancy, though it was almost painfully half-hearted to say the least. While X6-88 could not begin to pretend the situation was one he could make light of, he found the prospect of some momentary emotional distance from it desirable. He chose, therefore, to use the opening provided to shift the conversation back towards their initial...disagreement, rather than the unsettling snarl of other issues it had uncovered. 

"You gave me a choice, as you said," X6-88 reminded him. "A choice for which my decision was made contingent on the promise that we would work toward the Brotherhood's destruction." 

"And we will," Dee said. "It just wasn't the time." 

"The Sentinel was the highest ranking member of the Brotherhood we're ever likely to see outside of their airship," X6-88 argued. "We had him right in front of us, and you were going to let him go." 

"Because attacking without a plan could have gotten us both _killed_. The last time I faced Walker it took me more than a month to even begin to recover, and I was in a _lot_ better shape then than I am now. I probably wouldn't survive a Round Two with him right now, and if he hadn't missed with that first shot at you-" 

Dee stood up suddenly, half-looking to X6-88 as if he might pace to alleviate what he could only assume was frustration. 

"Shit, I just- I don't get it," Dee said. "I know why _I've_ got such a hard-on for taking Walker down, but- I mean, sure, he helped the Brotherhood get their big bad murder bot online, but high ranking or not, he's still just one cog in the Brotherhood's machine." 

Dee brought himself up short, wiping a hand over his face. He looked at X6-88 almost...plaintively. 

"What am I missing here, X6?" Dee asked him. "Just- What the hell was he to the Institute that makes him so important? What makes him worth your _life_?" 

X6-88 felt himself still—stunned in that moment, he belatedly realized, into the same sort of unsettling motionlessness that he had so often observed in Dee. And it was no wonder, for thinking about the answer to the agent's question only brought it all back to him—the uncertainty that he had felt as Father's unusual plans for Walker had been put into action, his...unease as Walker was granted unprecedented access to the Institute's inner sanctum. The nervousness the man's presence there had brought him, and the impulse against all decorum to present some argument or warning to his handlers in the SRB—or even to Father himself. His shame at the idea as he had talked himself out of it—the inappropriate arrogance, the maladaptive _pride_ to imagine that he had any place to question Father's vision. 

And the outrage he had felt, once it was all gone, once he learned what Walker had done... 

( _It should never have happened. It didn't have to happen...if only Walker had never left Libertalia alive..._ ) 

And X6-88 had heard whispers in the SRB that Walker had maintained some meager contact with the Railroad agents that had helped him gain access to the Institute, though from his understanding he associated with them only once or twice before the end. Clearly, in the end Walker had chosen his side—chosen the Brotherhood—but despite that allegiance, it was doubtful that even they were privy to the information about Walker that X6-88 possessed. Within an organization exhibiting that level of zealotry and fanaticism, the knowledge of Walker's ties to the Institute would no doubt have been a stain on his good name... 

Sharing that information with a group as unpredictable and disorganized as the Railroad must have seemed just as unwise. 

The sudden realization that _Dee didn't know_ probably shouldn't have felt as monumental to him as it did. 

"The Director of the Institute," X6-88 began, slowly, so very slowly to start, "was a man that we synths called Father. His DNA provided the template from which all of the third generation of synths were made. He had devoted his life to the Institute, and his vision. His legacy would have seen the bright light of humanity's greatest achievements preserved for centuries to come, until civilization could safely reclaim its place on the surface." 

A part of him still rebelled at the idea of sharing this information with even a former member of the Railroad. But the Institute had already fallen. Who was there to suffer harm through the exploitation of this knowledge now? If he could not vent the depths of his grief, and his rage—his _hatred_ of the man that had destroyed everything X6-88 knew with his betrayal—to Dee and hope that he might find understanding then who? And if he could be made to understand that, then- 

( _Then he might...what? Aid X6-88 in expending his life against Walker—pointlessly, as he had said? It seemed unlikely._ ) 

"His name was Shaun Walker," X6-88 concluded gravely. The name, though as familiar as his own designation, was one that it had never been his privilege to speak aloud, and his voice faltered slightly as it passed almost clumsily from his lips, "and he was Nathan Walker's son." 

And X6-88 was so caught up in the outpour, the draining of venom from this wound he had carried since the Institute's destruction, that he barely noticed Dee raise a shaking hand to draw the sunglasses from his face. 

"Son of a bitch..." Dee said, less words almost than a hoarse, horrified breath. "Son of a _bitch_." 

"I followed him," Dee said. He sounded...dazed. "I was his fucking shadow, you know? Every step he took, from the moment he crawled out of that fucking vault, I was only five behind him, just out of sight. I knew every goddamned move he made, every choice, and I was sure I had his number... But the Institute was the one place I couldn't follow, and after that your teleporter and the Brotherhood's vertibirds made him so fucking difficult to track..." 

"I knew whatever happened down there must have been a bombshell, because he was never really right after that. Never really the same—not different enough that I was worried he'd been replaced, but just different enough that every estimation I made wound up way off the mark. I thought I knew what he was doing. How he'd react..." 

Dee trailed off, shaking his head slowly. 

"I thought he was on our side," Dee said, his voice cracking slightly. "He seemed...ready to entertain the idea that the Brotherhood was wrong about synths. Maybe not convinced, not yet, but he'd been willing to _listen_. Then one day he just...stopped. I could tell he'd stopped listening but I didn't know why. And I never got the chance to find out, because they sent him off on a mission into the Glowing Sea, and then..." 

It wasn't difficult to guess what had happened then. Many parts of Bunker Hill still bore scars from the battle. X6-88 remembered hearing about the assault after it had happened, the way the Brotherhood of Steel had swept in and laid waste to the Railroad's hidden hideaway. Despite their best efforts, every one of the rogue units had been destroyed by the Brotherhood before they could be reclaimed, and the coursers committed to retrieve them as well. The head of the SRB had been quite dismayed at the resources that had been spent in vain trying to prevent the...regrettable destruction of Institute property. From the perspective of the Railroad, with their tendency toward unfortunate emotional attachment to the synths they stole, it would no doubt have seemed like a tragic loss of life. 

And X6-88 remembered the ruins of the old church, and the crypt below where he had woken up that was now a tomb twice over. 

Dee had gone quiet. He looked up at X6-88, the red gleam of his naked eyes searching his face intently. There was a vulnerability in it that X6-88 would never have imagined seeing, something _pleading_... 

"Do _you_ know why?" Dee asked him. "Do you know what changed his mind?" 

X6-88 was...at a loss, both for words and for an answer to the question. 

"No," he said, shaking his head. 

Dee nodded slowly. His gaze had drifted back to the thin shadows hovering over the reeking reservoir. His eyes, though still visible, didn't appear to be looking at anything in particular. 

"Right," he said, softly. "Right..." 

He dropped heavily back down onto the steps and shoved both hands over his face with a groan. 

"God," Dee swore, the sound muffled by his own hands, "he really fucked us both, didn't he?" 

As rhetorical questions went, X6-88 didn't think he had ever heard one less in need of his response. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case anyone was curious, this scene took place in the drainage near Taffington Boathouse.
> 
> I've been sitting on this chapter longer than I had to, mostly because I'm kind of ambivalent about parts of it. There's a lot going on here, not a whole lot of it gets addressed properly, and I'm not really especially confident in my characterization of either man. 
> 
> On the one hand, I'm definitely Team Let X6 Be Soft, but he's a long, _long_ way from feeling safe enough for that, and in no way is any vampire mind bullshit meant to let Dee speed run through his defenses. 
> 
> (Not that he's is trying to, not on purpose. He's just super fucking lonely.)
> 
> On Deacon's end... It's hard for me to write a liar. I have trouble seeing when and why it makes sense for him to lie. Even having given him an explanation for being marginally more honest with X6 than he's ever been in canon, it still feels fake. 
> 
> In other news, I have some amazing friends who put money together to get me a new laptop, so no more Xbox-posted chapters (!!!). _Hopefully_ that should mean it'll be easier for me to proceed with the fic from here. Whether it actually _will_ mean that is something we'll just have to see.


End file.
